heSpiritof][5uth 
■  Qi:x3treets 

By  jane    ADDAMS 


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THE  SPIRIT  OF  YOUTH  AND 
THE  CITY  STREETS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA.  Ltd 

TORONTO 


THE 

SPIRIT  OF  YOUTH 

AND  THE   CITY  STREETS 


By 
JANE  ADDAMS 

HULL  HOUSE,  CHICAGO 

jiuthor  of  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics 
Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  etc. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1910 
All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1909, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1909.    Reprinted 
November,  December,  1909. ;  January,  1910. 


Berwick  &  Smith  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


s^  TO  MY  DEAR  FRIEND 


Jouigfe  tie  l&obtn  IBotom 

WITH  SINCERE  ADMIRATION  FOR  HER    UNDERSTANDING 
OF  THE  NEEDS  OF  CITY  CHILDREN  AND  WITH    WARM 
APPRECIATION  OF  HER  SERVICE  AS  PRESIDENT 
OF  THE  JUVENILE  PROTECTIVE   ASSO- 
CIATION   OF    CHICAGO 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
Youth   in   the  City 3 

CHAPTER  II 
The  Wrecked  Foundations  of  Domesticity 25 

CHAPTER  III 
The   Quest   for   Adventure 51 

CHAPTER  IV 
The   House   of   Dreams 75 

CHAPTER  V 
Youth    in    Industry 107 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Thirst  for  Righteousness 139 


FOREWORD 

Much  of  the  material  in  the  following  pages 
has  appeared  in  current  publications.  It  is  here 
presented  in  book  form  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
prove  of  value  to  those  groups  of  people  who  in 
man}^  cities  are  making  a  gallant  effort  to  min- 
imize the  dangers  which  surround  young  peo- 
ple and  to  provide  them  with  opportunities  for 
recreation. 


CHAPTER  I 
YOUTH  AND  THE  CITY 


CHAPTER  I 

YOUTH  IN  THE  CITY 

Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  each  gen- 
eration longs  for  a  reassurance  as  to  the  value 
and  charm  of  life,  and  is  secretly  afraid  lest 
it  lose  its  sense  of  the  youth  of  the  earth.  This 
is  doubtless  one  reason  why  it  so  passionately 
cherishes  its  poets  and  artists  who  have  been 
able  to  explore  for  themselves  and  to  reveal 
to  others  the  perpetual  springs  of  life's  self- 
renewal. 

And  yet  the  average  man  cannot  obtain  this 
desired  reassurance  through  literature,  nor  yet 
through  glimpses  of  earth  and  sky.  It  can 
come  to  him  only  through  the  chance  embodi- 
ment of  joy  and  youth  which  life  itself  may 
throw  in  his  way.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  for 
the  mass  of  men  the  message  is  never  so  un- 
challenged and  so  invincible  as  when  embodied 
in  youth  itself.  One  generation  after  another 
has  depended  upon  its  young  to  equip  it  with 

3 


4  YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STKEETS 

gaiety  and  enthusiasm,  to  persuade  it  that  liv- 
ing is  a  pleasure,  until  men  everywhere  have 
anxiously  provided  channels  through  which  this 
wine  of  life  might  flow,  and  be  preserved  for 
their  delight.  The  classical  city  promoted  play 
with  careful  solicitude,  building  the  theater  and 
stadium  as  it  built  the  market  place  and  the 
temple.  The  Greeks  held  their  games  so  in- 
tegral a  part  of  religion  and  patriotism  that 
they  came  to  expect  from  their  poets  the  highest 
utterances  at  the  very  moments  when  the. sense 
of  pleasure  released  the  national  life.  In  the 
medieval  city  the  knights  held  their  tourneys, 
the  guilds  their  pageants,  the  people  their 
dances,  and  the  church  made  festival  for  its  most 
cherished  saints  with  gay  street  processions,  and 
presented  a  drama  in  which  no  less  a  theme 
than  the  history  of  creation  became  a  matter  of 
thrilling  interest.  Only  in  the  modern  city  have 
men  concluded  that  it  is  no  longer  necessary  for 
the  municipality  to  provide  for  the  insatiable 
desire  for  play.  In  so  far  as  they  have  acted 
upon  this  conclusion,  they  have  entered  upon 
a  most  difficult  and  dangerous  experiment;  and 
this   at  the   very  moment   when  the   city   has 


YOUTH    IN    THE    CITY  5 

become  distinctly  industrial,  and  daily  labor 
is  continually  more  monotonous  and  sub- 
divided. We  forget  how  new  the  modern  city 
is,  and  how  short  the  span  of  time  in  which 
we  have  assumed  that  we  can  eliminate  public 
provision  for  recreation. 

A  further  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  this 
industrialism  has  gathered  together  multitudes 
of  eager  young  creatures  from  all  quarters  of 
the  earth  as  a  labor  supply  for  the  countless 
factories  and  workshops,  upon  which  the  pres- 
ent industrial  city  is  based.  Never  before  in 
civilization  have  such  numbers  of  young  girls 
been  suddenly  released  from  the  protection  of 
the  home  and  permitted  to  walk  unattended 
upon  city  streets  and  to  work  under  alien 
roofs;  for  the  first  time  they  are  being  prized 
more  for  their  labor  power  than  for  their 
innocence,  their  tender  beauty,  their  ephemeral 
gaiety.  Society  cares  more  for  the  products 
they  manufacture  than  for  their  immemorial 
ability  to  reaffirm  the  charm  of  existence. 
Never  before  have  such  numbers  of  young  boys 
earned  money  independently  of  the  family  life, 
and  felt  themselves  free  to  spend  it  as  they 


6  YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

choose  in  the  midst  of  vice  deliberately  dis- 
guised as  pleasure. 

This  stupid  experiment  of  organizing  work 
and  failing  to  organize  play  has,  of  course, 
brought  about  a  fine  revenge.  The  love  of 
pleasure  will  not  be  denied,  and  when  it  has 
turned  into  all  sorts  of  malignant  and  vicious 
appetites,  then  we,  the  middle  aged,  grow  quite 
distracted  and  resort  to  all  sorts  of  restrictive 
measures.  We  even  try  to  dam  up  the  sweet 
fountain  itself  because  we  are  affrighted  by 
these  neglected  streams;  but  almost  worse 
than  the  restrictive  measures  is  our  apparent 
belief  that  the  city  itself  has  no  obligation  in 
the  matter,  an  assumption  upon  which  the 
modern  city  turns  over  to  commercialism  prac- 
tically all  the  provisions  for  public  recreation. 

Quite  as  one  set  of  men  has  organized  the 
young  people  into  industrial  enterprises  in 
order  to  profit  from  their  toil,  so  another  set 
of  men  and  also  of  women,  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
have  entered  the  neglected  field  of  recreation 
and  have  organized  enterprises  which  make 
profit  out  of  this  invincible  love  of  pleasure. 

In    every    city    arise    so-called    ** places'*— 


YOUTH   IN   THE    CITY  7 

"gin-palaces,"  they  are  called  in  fiction; 
in  Chicago  we  euphemistically  say  merely 
''places, "—in  which  alcohol  is  dispensed,  not 
to  allay  thirst,  but,  ostensibly  to  stimulate 
gaiety,  it  is  sold  really  in  order  to  empty 
pockets.  Huge  dance  halls  are  opened  to 
which  hundreds  of  young  people  are  attracted, 
many  of  whom  stand  wistfully  outside  a  roped 
circle,  for  it  requires  five  cents  to  procure 
within  it  for  five  minutes  the  sense  of  allure- 
ment and  intoxication  which  is  sold  in  lieu  of 
innocent  pleasure.  These  coarse  and  illicit 
merrymakings  remind  one  of  the  unrestrained 
jollities  of  Restoration  London,  and  they  are 
indeed  their  direct  descendants,  properly  com- 
mercialized, still  confusing  joy  with  lust,  and 
gaiety  with  debauchery.  Since  the  soldiers  of 
Cromwell  shut  up  the  people's  playhouses  and 
destroyed  their  pleasure  fields,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  city  has  turned  over  the  provision  for 
public  recreation  to  the  most  evil-minded  and 
the  most  unscrupulous  members  of  the  com- 
munity. We  see  thousands  of  girls  walking 
up  and  down  the  streets  on  a  pleasant  evening 
with  no  chance  to  catch  a  sight  of  pleasure 


S  YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

even  througli  a  lighted  window,  save  as  these 
lurid  places  provide  it.  Apparently  the  mod- 
ern city  sees  in  these  girls  only  two  possibili- 
ties, both  of  them  commercial:  first,  a  chance 
to  utilize  by  day  their  new  and  tender  labor 
power  in  its  factories  and  shops,  and  then  an- 
other chance  in  the  evening  to  extract  from 
them  their  petty  wages  by  pandering  to  their 
love  of  pleasure. 

As  these  overworked  girls  stream  along  the 
street,  the  rest  of  us  see  only  the  self-conscious 
walk,  the  giggling  speech,  the  preposterous 
clothing.  And  yet  through  the  huge  hat,  with 
its  wilderness  of  bedraggled  feathers,  the  girl 
announces  to  the  world  that  she  is  here.  She 
demands  attention  to  the  fact  of  her  existence, 
she  states  that  she  is  ready  to  live,  to  take  her 
place  in  the  world.  The  most  precious  moment 
in  human  development  is  the  young  creature's 
assertion  that  he  is  unlike  any  other  human 
being,  and  has  an  individual  contribution  to 
make  to  the  world.  The  variation  from  the 
established  type  is  at  the  root  of  all  change, 
the  only  possible  basis  for  progress,  all  that 


YOUTH    IN    THE    CITY  9 

keeps  life  from  growing  unprofitably  stale  and 
repetitious. 

Is  it  only  the  artists  who  really  see  these 
young  creatures  as  they  are— the  artists  who 
are  themselves  endowed  with  immortal  youth? 
Is  it  our  disregard  of  the  artist's  message 
which  makes  us  so  blind  and  so  stupid,  or  are 
we  so  under  the  influence  of  our  Zeitgeist  that 
we  can  detect  only  commercial  values  in  the 
young  as  well  as  in  the  old?  It  is  as  if  our 
eyes  were  holden  to  the  mystic  beauty,  the 
redemptive  joy,  the  civic  pride  which  these 
multitudes  of  young  people  might  supply  to 
our  dingy  towns. 

The  young  creatures  themselves  piteously 
look  all  about  them  in  order  to  find  an  ade- 
quate means  of  expression  for  their  most  pre- 
cious message:  One  day  a  serious  young  man 
came  to  Hull-House  with  his  pretty  young  sis- 
ter who,  he  explained,  wanted  to  go  somewhere 
every  single  evening,  **  although  she  could  only 
give  the  flimsy  excuse  that  the  flat  was  too 
little  and  too  stuffy  to  stay  in.''  In  the  diffi- 
cult role  of  elder  brother,  he  had  done  his 
best,  stating  that  he  had  taken  her  **to  all  the 


10  YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

missions  in  the  neighborhood,  that  she  had  had 
a  chance  to  listen  to  some  awful  good  sermons 
and  to  some  elegant  hymns,  but  that  some  way 
she  did  not  seem  to  care  for  the  society  of  the 
best  Christian  people."  The  little  sister 
reddened  painfully  under  this  cruel  indictment 
and  could  offer  no  word  of  excuse,  but  a  curi- 
ous thing  happened  to  me.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
phrase  *'the  best  Christian  people,"  perhaps  it 
was  the  delicate  color  of  her  flushing  cheeks 
and  her  swimming  eyes,  but  certain  it  is,  that 
instantly  and  vividly  there  appeared  to  my 
mind  the  delicately  tinted  piece  of  wall  in  a 
Koman  catacomb  where  the  early  Christians, 
through  a  dozen  devices  of  spring  flowers, 
skipping  lambs  and  a  shepherd  tenderly  guid- 
ing the  young,  had  indelibly  written  down  that 
the  Christian  message  is  one  of  inexpressible 
joy.  Who  is  responsible  for  forgetting  this 
message  delivered  by  the  *'best  Christian  peo- 
ple" two  thousand  years  ago?  Who  is  to  blame 
that  the  lambs,  the  little  ewe  lambs,  have  been 
so  caught  upon  the  brambles? 

But  quite   as  the  modern  city  wastes  this 
most  valuable  moment  in  the  life  of  the  girl, 


YOUTH    IN    THE    CITY  H 

and  drives  into  all  sorts  of  absurd  and  obscure 
expressions  her  love  and  yearning  towards  the 
world  in  which  she  forecasts  her  destiny,  so  it 
often  drives  the  boy  into  gambling  and  drink- 
ing in  order  to  find  his  adventure. 

Of  Lincoln's  enlistment  of  two  and  a  half 
million  soldiers,  a  very  large  number  were  under 
twenty-one,  some  of  them  under  eighteen,  and 
still  others  were  mere  children  under  fifteen. 
Even  in  those  stirring  times  when  patriotism 
and  hiorh  resolve  were  at  the  flood,  no  one  re- 
sponded as  did  "the  boys,"  and  the  great  soul 
who  yearned  over  them,  who  refused  to  shoot  the 
sentinels  who  slept  the  sleep  of  childhood,  knew, 
as  no  one  else  knew,  the  precious  glowing  stuff 
of  which  his  army  was  made.  But  what  of  the 
millions  of  boj's  who  are  now  searching  for  ad- 
venturous action,  longing  to  fulfil  the  same  high 
purpose  ? 

One  of  the  most  pathetic  sights  in  the  public 
dance  halls  of  Chicago  is  the  number  of  young 
men,  obviously  honest  young  fellows  from  the 
country,  who  stand  about  vainly  hoping  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  some  "nice  girl." 
They  look  eagerly  up  and  down  the  rows  of 


12  YOUTH   AND   THE   CITY    STREETS 

girls,  many  of  whom  are  drawn  to  the  hall  by 
the  same  keen  desire  for  pleasure  and  social 
intercourse  which  the  lonely  young  men  them- 
selves feel. 

One  Sunday  night  at  twelve  o'clock  I  had 
occasion  to  go  into  a  large  public  dance  hall. 
As  I  was  standing  by  the  rail  looking  for  the 
girl  I  had  come  to  find,  a  young  man  ap- 
proached me  and  quite  simply  asked  me  to  in- 
troduce him  to  some  ''nice  girl,"  saying  that 
he  did  not  know  any  one  there.  On  my  replying 
that  a  public  dance  hall  was  not  the  best  place 
in  which  to  look  for  a  nice  girl,  he  said:  "But 
I  don't  know  any  other  place  where  there  is 
a  chance  to  meet  any  kind  of  a  girl.  I'm 
awfully  lonesome  since  I  came  to  Chicago. '* 
And  then  he  added  rather  defiantly:  ''Some 
nice  girls  do  come  here!  It's  one  of  the  best 
halls  in  town."  He  was  voicing  the  "bitter 
loneliness"  that  many  city  men  remember  to 
have  experienced  during  the  first  years  after 
they  had  "come  up  to  town."  Occasionally 
the  right  sort  of  man  and  girl  meet  each  other 
in  these  dance  halls  and  the  romance  with  such 
a  tawdry  beginning  ends  happily  and  respect- 


YOUTH    IN    THE    CITY  13 

ably.  But,  unfortunately,  mingled  with  the 
respectable  young  men  seeking  to  form  the 
acquaintance  of  young  women  through  the  only 
channel  which  is  available  to  them,  are  many 
young  fellows  of  evil  purpose,  and  among  the 
girls  who  have  left  their  lonely  boarding 
houses  or  rigid  homes  for  a  ''little  fling"  are 
likewise  women  who  openly  desire  to  make 
money  from  the  young  men  whom  they  meet, 
and  back  of  it  all  is  the  desire  to  profit  by  the 
sale  of  intoxicating  and  "doctored"  drinks. 

Perhaps  never  before  have  the  pleasures  of 
the  young  and  mature  become  so  definitely 
separated  as  in  the  modern  city.  The  public 
dance  halls  filled  with  frivolous  and  irrespon- 
sible young  people  in  a  feverish  search  for 
pleasure,  are  but  a  sorry  substitute  for  the  old 
dances  on  the  village  green  in  which  all  of 
the  older  people  of  the  village  participated. 
Chaperonage  was  not  then  a  social  duty  but 
natural  and  inevitable,  and  the  whole  court- 
ship period  was  guarded  by  the  conventions 
and  restraint  which  were  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  had  developed  through  years  of 
publicity  and  simple  propriety. 


14  YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

The  only  marvel  is  that  the  stupid  attempt 
to  put  the  fine  old  wine  of  traditional  country 
life  into  the  new  bottles  of  the  modern  town 
does  not  lead  to  disaster  oftener  than  it  does, 
and  that  the  wine  so  long  remains  pure  and 
sparkling. 

We  cannot  afford  to  be  ungenerous  to  the 
city  in  which  we  live  without  suffering  the 
penalty  which  lack  of  fair  interpretation  al- 
ways entails.  Let  us  know  the  modern  city 
in  its  weakness  and  wickedness,  and  then  seek 
to  rectify  and  purify  it  until  it  shall  be  free  at 
least  from  the  grosser  temptations  which  now 
beset  the  young  people  who  are  living  in  its 
tenement  houses  and  working  in  its  factories. 
The  mass  of  these  young  people  are  possessed 
of  good  intentions  and  they  ar€  equipped  with 
a  certain  understanding  of  city  life.  This  it- 
self could  be  made  a  most  valuable  social  in- 
strument toward  securing  innocent  recreation 
and  better  social  organization.  They  are  al- 
ready serving  the  city  in  so  far  as  it  is  honey- 
combed with  mutual  benefit  societies,  with 
''pleasure  clubs,"  with  organizations  connected 
with  churches  and  factories  which  are  filling 


YOUTH    IN   THE    CITY  15 

a  genuine  social  need.  And  yet  the  whole  ap- 
paratus for  supplying  pleasure  is  wretchedly 
inadequate  and  full  of  danger  to  whomsoever 
may  approach  it.  Who  is  responsible  for  its 
inadequacy  and  dangers?  We  certainly  cannot 
expect  the  fathers  and  mothers  who  have  come 
to  the  city  from  farms  or  who  have  emigrated 
from  other  lands  to  appreciate  or  rectify  these 
dangers.  We  cannot  expect  the  young  people 
themselves  to  cling  to  conventions  which  are 
totally  unsuited  to  modern  city  conditions,  nor 
yet  to  be  equal  to  the  task  of  forming  new 
conventions  through  which  this  more  agglom- 
erate social  life  may  express  itself.  Above  all 
we  cannot  hope  that  they  will  understand  the 
emotional  force  which  seizes  them  and  which, 
when  it  does  not  find  the  traditional  line  of 
domesticity,  serves  as  a  cancer  in  the  very 
tissues  of  society  and  as  a  disrupter  of  the 
securest  social  bonds.  No  attempt  is  made  to 
treat  the  manifestations  of  this  fundamental 
instinct  with  dignity  or  to  give  it  possible  so- 
cial utility.  The  spontaneous  joy,  the  clamor 
for  pleasure,  the  desire  of  the  young  people  to 
appear  finer  and  better  and  altogether  more 


16         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

lovely  than  they  really  are,  the  idealization  not 
only  of  each  other  but  of  the  whole  earth 
which  they  regard  but  as  a  theater  for  their 
noble  exploits,  the  unworldly  ambitions,  the 
romantic  hopes,  the  make-believe  world  in 
which  they  live,  if  properly  utilized,  what 
might  they  not  do  to  make  our  sordid  cities 
more  beautiful,  more  companionable  ?  And  yet 
at  the  present  moment  every  city  is  full  of 
young  people  who  are  utterly  bewildered  and 
uninstructed  in  regard  to  the  basic  experience 
which  must  inevitably  come  to  them,  and  which 
has  varied,  remote,  and  indirect  expressions. 

Even  those  who  may  not  agree  with  the 
authorities  w^ho  claim  that  it  is  this  funda- 
mental sex  susceptibility  which  suffuses  the 
world  with  its  deepest  meaning  and  beauty, 
and  furnishes  the  momentum  towards  all  art, 
will  perhaps  permit  me  to  quote  the  classical 
expression  of  this  view  as  set  forth  in  that 
ancient  and  wonderful  conversation  between 
Socrates  and  the  wise  woman  Diotima.  Socra- 
tes asks:  '*What  are  they  doing  who  show  all 
this  eagerness  and  heat  which  is  called  love? 
And  what  is  the  object  they  have  in  view? 


YOUTH    IN    THE    CITY  17 

Answer  me."  Diotima  replies:  *'I  will  teach 
you.  The  object  which  they  have  in  view  is 
birth  in  beauty,  whether  of  body  or  soul.  .  .  . 
For  love,  Socrates,  is  not  as  you  imagine  the  love 
of  the  beautiful  only  ....  but  the  love  of  birth 
in  beauty,  because  to  the  mortal  creature  gen- 
eration is  a  sort  of  eternity  and  immortality." 

To  emphasize  the  eternal  aspects  of  love 
is  not  of  course  an  easy  undertaking,  even  if 
we  follow  the  clue  afforded  by  the  heart  of 
every  generous  lover.  His  experience  at  least 
in  certain  moments  tends  to  pull  him  on  and 
out  from  the  passion  for  one  to  an  enthusiasm 
for  that  highest  beauty  and  excellence  of  which 
the  most  perfect  form  is  but  an  inadequate  ex- 
pression.  Even  the  most  loutish  tenement- 
house  youth  vaguely  feels  this,  and  at  least  at 
rare  intervals  reveals  it  in  his  talk  to  his 
**girl."  His  memory  unexpectedly  brings  hid- 
den treasures  to  the  surface  of  consciousness 
and  he  recalls  the  more  delicate  and  tender 
experiences  of  his  childhood  and  earlier  youth. 
*'I  remember  the  time  when  my  little  sister 
died,  that  I  rode  out  to  the  cemetery  feeling 
that  everybody  in  Chicago  had  moved  away 
2 


18         YOUTH    AXD    THE    CITY    STREETS 

from  the  town  to  make  room  for  that  kid's 
funeral,  everything  was  so  darned  lonesome 
and  yet  it  was  kind  of  peaceful  too."  Or,  "I 
never  had  a  chance  to  go  into  the  country  when 
I  was  a  kid,  but  I  remember  one  day  when  I 
had  to  deliver  a  package  way  out  on  the  West 
Side,  that  I  saw  a  flock  of  sheep  in  Douglas 
Park.  I  had  never  thought  that  a  sheep  could 
be  anywhere  but  in  a  picture,  and  when  I  saw 
those  big  white  spots  on  the  green  grass  be- 
ginning to  move  and  to  turn  into  sheep,  I  felt 
exactly  as  if  Saint  Cecilia  had  come  out  of  her 
frame  over  the  organ  and  was  walking  in  the 
park. ' '  Such  moments  come  into  the  life  of  the 
most  prosaic  youth  living  in  the  most  crowded 
quarters  of  the  cities.  What  do  we  do  to  en- 
courage and  to  solidify  those  moments,  to 
make  them  come  true  in  our  dingy  towns,  to 
give  them  expression  in  forms  of  art  ? 

We  not  only  fail  in  this  undertaking  but 
even  debase  existing  forms  of  art.  We  are 
informed  by  high  authority  that  there  is  no- 
thing in  the  environment  to  which  youth  so 
keenly  responds  as  to  music,  and  yet  the 
streets,  the  vaudeville  shows,  the  five-cent  the- 


YOUTH   IN   THE    CITY  19 

aters  are  full  of  the  most  blatant  and  vulgar 
songs.  The  trivial  and  obscene  words,  the 
meaningless  and  flippant  airs  run  through  the 
heads  of  hundreds  of  young  people  for  hours 
at  a  time  while  they  are  engaged  in  monotonous 
factory  work.  We  totally  ignore  that  ancient 
connection  between  music  and  morals  which 
was  so  long  insisted  upon  by  philosophers  as 
well  as  poets.  The  street  music  has  quite 
broken  away  from  all  control,  both  of  the 
educator  and  the  patriot,  and  we  have  grown 
singularly  careless  in  regard  to  its  influence 
upon  young  people.  Although  we  legislate 
against  it  in  saloons  because  of  its  dangerous 
influence  there,  we  constantly  permit  music  on 
the  street  to  incite  that  which  should  be  con- 
trolled, to  degrade  that  which  should  be  exalted, 
to  make  sensuous  that  which  might  be  lifted  into 
the  realm  of  the  higher  imagination. 

Our  attitude  towards  music  is  typical  of  our 
carelessness  towards  all  those  things  which 
make  for  common  joy  and  for  the  restraints  of 
higher  civilization  on  the  streets.  It  is  as  if 
our  cities  had  not  yet  developed  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility in  regard  to  the  life  of  the  streets, 


20         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

and  continually  forget  that  recreation  is 
stronger  than  vice,  and  that  recreation  alone 
can  stifle  the  lust  for  vice. 

Perhaps  we  need  to  take  a  page  from  the 
philosophy  of  the  Greeks  to  whom  the  world 
of  fact  was  also  the  world  of  the  ideal,  and  to 
whom  the  realization  of  what  ought  to  be,  in- 
volved not  the  destruction  of  what  was,  but 
merely  its  perfecting  upon  its  o"vvn  lines.  To 
the  Greeks  virtue  was  not  a  hard  conformity 
to  a  law  felt  as  alien  to  the  natural  character, 
but  a  free  expression  of  the  inner  life.  To 
treat  thus  the  fundamental  susceptibility  of 
sex  which  now  so  bewilders  the  street  life 
and  drives  young  people  themselves  into  all 
sorts  of  difficulties,  would  mean  to  loosen  it 
from  the  things  of  sense  and  to  link  it  to  the 
affairs  of  the  imagination.  It  would  mean  to 
fit  to  this  gross  and  heavy  stuff  the  wings  of 
the  mind,  to  scatter  from  it  ''the  clinging  mud 
of  banality  and  vulgarity,"  and  to  speed  it 
on  through  our  city  streets  amid  spontaneous 
laughter,  snatches  of  lyric  song,  the  recovered 
forms  of  old  dances,  and  the  traditional  rondels 
of  merry  games.    It  would  thus  bring  charm 


YOUTH  IN    THE    CITY  21 

and   beauty   to   the  prosaic    city    and  connect 

it    subtly   with   the  arts    of   the    past  as    well 

as   with   the    vigor  and    renewed   life  of   the 
future. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  WRECKED  FOUNDATIONS 
OF  DOMESTICITY 


CHAPTER  n 

THE  WRECKED  FOUNDATIONS  OF 
DOMESTICITY 

"Sense  with  keenest  edge  unused 
Yet  unsteel'd  by  scathing  fire: 
Lovely  feet  as  yet  unbruised 
On  the  ways  of  dark  desire!" 

These  words  written  by  a  poet  to  his  young 
son  express  the  longing  which  has  at  times 
seized  all  of  us,  to  guard  youth  from  the  mass 
of  difficulties  which  may  be  traced  to  the  ob- 
scure manifestation  of  that  fundamental  sus- 
ceptibility of  which  we  are  all  slow  to  speak 
and  concerning  which  we  evade  public  respon- 
sibility, although  it  brings  its  scores  of  victims 
into  the  police  courts  every  morning. 

At  the  very  outset  we  must  bear  in  mind  that 
the  senses  of  youth  are  singularly  acute,  and 
ready  to  respond  to  every  vivid  appeal.  "We 
know  that  nature  herself  has  sharpened  the 
senses  for  her  own  purposes,  and  is  deliber- 

25 


26         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

ately  establishing  a  connection  between  them 
and  the  newly  awakened  susceptibility  of  sex; 
for  it  is  only  through  the  outward  senses  that 
the  selection  of  an  individual  mate  is  made  and 
the  instinct  utilized  for  nature's  purposes.  It 
would  seem,  however,  that  nature  was  deter- 
mined that  the  force  and  constancy  of  the  in- 
stinct must  make  up  for  its  lack  of  precision, 
and  that  she  was  totally  unconcerned  that  this 
instinct  ruthlessly  seized  the  youth  at  the  moment 
when  he  was  least  prepared  to  cope  with  it ;  not 
only  because  his  powers  of  self-control  and  dis- 
crimination are  unequal  to  the  task,  but  because 
his  senses  are  helplessly  wide  open  to  the 
world.  These  early  manifestations  of  the  sex 
susceptibility  are  for  the  most  part  vague  and 
formless,  and  are  absolutely  without  definition 
to  the  youth  himself.  Sometimes  months  and 
years  elapse  before  the  individual  mate  is  se- 
lected and  determined  upon,  and  during  the 
time  w^hen  the  differentiation  is  not  complete— 
and  it  often  is  not— there  is  of  necessity  a 
great  deal  of  groping  and  waste. 

This  period  of  groping  is  complicated  by  the 
fact  that  the  youth's  power  for  appreciating 


WEECKED    FOUNDATIONS  27 

is  far  ahead  of  his  ability  for  expression.  **The 
inner  trafiSc  fairly  obstructs  the  outer  cur- 
rent," and  it  is  nothing  short  of  cruelty  to 
over-stimulate  his  senses  as  does  the  modern 
city.  This  period  is  difficult  everywhere,  but 
it  seems  at  times  as  if  a  great  city  almost  de- 
liberately increased  its  perils.  The  newly 
awakened  senses  are  appealed  to  by  all  that 
is  gaudy  and  sensual,  by  the  flippant  street 
music,  the  highly  colored  theater  posters,  the 
trashy  love  stories,  the  feathered  hats,  the 
cheap  heroics  of  the  revolvers  displayed  in  the 
pawn-shop  windows.  This  fundamental  sus- 
ceptibility is  thus  evoked  without  a  corres- 
ponding stir  of  the  higher  imagination,  and 
the  result  is  as  dangerous  as  possible.  We  are 
told  upon  good  authority  that  "If  the  imagi- 
nation is  retarded,  while  the  senses  remain 
awake,  we  have  a  state  of  esthetic  insensibil- 
ity,"—in  other  words,  the  senses  become  sod- 
den and  cannot  be  lifted  from  the  ground.  It 
is  this  state  of  ''esthetic  insensibility"  into 
which  we  allow  the  youth  to  fall  which  is  so 
distressing  and  so  unjustifiable.  Sex  impulse 
then  becomes  merely  a  dumb  and  powerful  in- 


28         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

stinct  without  in  the  least  awakening  the  im- 
agination or  the  heart,  nor  does  it  overflow 
into  neighboring  fields  of  consciousness.  Every 
city  contains  hundreds  of  degenerates  who 
have  been  over-mastered  and  borne  down  by 
it;  they  fill  the  casual  lodging  houses  and  the 
infirmaries.  In  many  instances  it  has  pushed 
men  of  ability  and  promise  to  the  bottom  of  the 
social  scale.  AVarner,  in  his  American  Chari- 
ties, designates  it  as  one  of  the  steady  forces 
making  for  failure  and  poverty,  and  contends 
that  ''the  inherent  uncleanness  of  their  minds 
prevents  many  men  from  rising  above  the  rank 
of  day  laborers  and  finally  incapacitates  them 
even  for  that  position."  He  also  suggests  that 
the  modern  man  has  a  stronger  imagination 
than  the  man  of  a  few  hundred  years  ago  and 
that  sensuality  destroys  him  the  more  rapidly. 
It  is  difficult  to  state  how  much  evil  and  dis- 
tress might  be  averted  if  the  imagination  Avere 
utilized  in  its  higher  capacities  through  the 
historic  paths.  An  English  moralist  has  lately 
asserted  that  ''much  of  the  evil  of  the  time  may 
be  traced  to  outraged  imagination.  It  is  the 
strongest  quality  of  the  brain  and  it  is  starved. 


WRECKED    FOUNDATIONS  29 

Children,  from  their  earliest  years,  are  hedged 
in  with  facts ;  they  are  not  trained  to  use  their 
minds  on  the  unseen." 

In  failing  to  diffuse  and  utilize  this  funda- 
mental instinct  of  sex  through  the  imagination, 
we  not  only  inadvertently  foster  vice  and  en- 
ervation, but  we  throw  away  one  of  the  most 
precious  implements  for  ministering  to  life's 
highest  needs.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  ill 
adjusted  function  consumes  quite  unnecessa- 
rily vast  stores  of  vital  energy,  even  when 
we  contemplate  it  in  its  immature  manifesta- 
tions which  are  infinitely  more  wholesome 
than  the  dumb  swamping  process.  Every  high 
school  boy  and  girl  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween the  concentration  and  the  diffusion  of 
this  impulse,  although  they  would  be  hope- 
lessly bewildered  by  the  use  of  the  terms. 
They  will  declare  one  of  their  companions  to 
be  ''in  love"  if  his  fancy  is  occupied  by  the 
image  of  a  single  person  about  whom  all  the 
newly  found  values  gather,  and  without  whom 
his  solitude  is  an  eternal  melancholy.  But  if 
the  stimulus  does  not  appear  as  a  definite 
image,   and  the  values  evoked  are  dispensed 


30  YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

over  the  world,  the  young  person  suddenly 
seems  to  have  discovered  a  beauty  and  signifi- 
cance in  many  things— he  responds  to  poetry, 
he  becomes  a  lover  of  nature,  he  is  filled  with 
religious  devotion  or  with  philanthropic  zeal. 
Experience,  with  young  people,  easily  illus- 
trates the  possibility  and  value  of  diffusion. 

It  is  neither  a  short  nor  an  easy  undertaking 
to  substitute  the  love  of  beauty  for  mere  de- 
sire, to  place  the  mind  above  the  senses;  but 
is  not  this  the  sum  of  the  immemorial  obliga- 
tion which  rests  upon  the  adults  of  each 
generation  if  they  would  nurture  and  restrain 
the  youth,  and  has  not  the  whole  history  of 
civilization  been  but  one  long  effort  to  sub- 
stitute psychic  impulsion  for  the  driving  force 
of  blind  appetite? 

Society  has  recognized  the  ''imitative  play" 
impulse  of  children  and  provides  them  with 
tiny  bricks  with  which  to  "build  a  house,"  and 
dolls  upon  which  they  may  lavish  their  tender- 
ness. We  exalt  the  love  of  the  mother  and  the 
stability  of  the  home,  but  in  regard  to  those 
difficult  years  between  childhood  and  maturity 
we  beg  the  question  and  unless  we  repress,  we 


WEECKED    F0U1ST)ATI0NS  31 

do  nothing:.  We  are  so  timid  and  inconsistent 
that  although  we  declare  the  home  to  be  the 
foundation  of  society,  we  do  nothing  to  direct 
the  force  upon  which  the  continuity  of  the 
home  depends.  And  yet  to  one  who  has  lived 
for  years  in  a  crowded  quarter  where  men, 
women  and  children  constantly  jostle  each 
other  and  press  upon  every  inch  of  space  in 
shop,  tenement  and  street,  nothing  is  more 
impressive  than  the  strength,  the  continuity, 
the  varied  and  powerful  manifestations,  of 
family  affection.  It  goes  without  saying  that 
every  tenement  house  contains  women  who  for 
years  spend  their  hurried  days  in  preparing 
food  and  clothing  and  pass  their  sleepless 
nights  in  tending  and  nursing  their  exigent 
children,  with  never  one  thought  for  their 
own  comfort  or  pleasure  or  development  save 
as  these  may  be  connected  with  the  future  of 
their  families.  We  all  know  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  every  shop  is  crowded  with  work- 
ingmen  who  year  after  year  spend  all  of  their 
wages  upon  the  nurture  and  education  of  their 
children,  reserving  for  themselves  but  the  shab- 


32         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

biest  clothing  and  a  crowded  place  at  the 
family  table. 

**Bad  weather  for  you  to  be  out  in/'  you 
remark  on  a  February  evening,  as  you  meet 
rheumatic  Mr.  S.  hobbling  home  through  the 
freezing  sleet  without  an  overcoat.  ^'Yes, 
it  is  bad/'  he  assents:  **but  I've  walked  to 
work  all  this  last  year.  We've  sent  the  oldest 
boy  back  to  high  school,  you  know,"  and  he 
moves  on  with  no  thought  that  he  is  doing 
other  than  fulfilling  the  ordinary  lot  of  the 
ordinary  man. 

These  are  the  familiar  and  the  constant  mani- 
festations of  family  affection  which  are  so 
intimate  a  part  of  life  that  we  scarcely  observe 
them. 

In  addition  to  these  we  find  peculiar  mani- 
festations of  family  devotion  exemplifying  that 
touching  affection  which  rises  to  unusual  sacri- 
fice because  it  is  close  to  pity  and  feebleness. 
^*My  cousin  and  his  family  had  to  go  back  to 
Italy.  He  got  to  Ellis  Island  with  his  wife 
and  five  children,  but  they  wouldn't  let  in  the 
feeble-minded  boy,  so  of  course  they  all  went 


WRECKED    FOUNDATIONS  33 

back  with  him.     My  cousin  was  fearful  dis- 
appointed/' 

Or,  **  These  are  the  five  children  of  my 
brother.  He  and  his  wife,  my  father  and 
mother,  were  all  done  for  in  the  bad  time  at 
Kishinef.  It's  up  to  me  all  right  to  take  care 
of  the  kids,  and  I'd  no  more  go  back  on  them 
than  I  would  on  my  own."  Or,  again:  **Yes, 
I  have  seven  children  of  my  own.  My  husband 
died  when  Tim  was  born.  The  other  three 
children  belong  to  my  sister,  who  died  the  year 
after  my  husband.  I  get  on  pretty  well.  I 
scrub  in  a  factory  every  night  from  six  to 
twelve,  and  I  go  out  washing  four  days  a  week. 
So  far  the  children  have  all  gone  through  the 
eighth  grade  before  they  quit  school,"  she 
concludes,  beaming  with  pride  and  joy. 

That  wonderful  devotion  to  the  child  seems 
at  times,  in  the  midst  of  our  stupid  social  and 
industrial  arrangements,  all  that  keeps  society 
human,  the  touch  of  nature  which  unites  it, 
as  it  was  that  same  devotion  which  first 
lifted  it  out  of  the  swamp  of  bestiality. 
The  devotion  to  the  child  is  *'the  in- 
evitable conclusion  of  the  two  premises  of 
8 


34         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

the  practical  syllogism,  the  devotion  of  man 
to  woman."  It  is,  of  course,  this  tremendous 
force  which  makes  possible  the  family,  that 
bond  which  holds  society  together  and  blends 
the  experience  of  generations  into  a  contin- 
uous story.  The  family  has  been  called  ''the 
fountain  of  morality,"  "the  source  of  law," 
**the  necessary  prelude  to  the  state"  itself; 
but  while  it  is  continuous  historically,  this  dual 
bond  must  be  made  anew  a  myriad  times  in 
each  generation,  and  the  forces  upon  which 
its  formation  depend  must  be  powerful  and 
unerring.  It  would  be  too  great  a  risk  to  leave 
it  to  a  force  whose  manifestations  are  inter- 
mittent and  uncertain.  The  desired  result  is 
too  grave  and  fundamental. 

One  Sunday  evening  an  excited  young  man 
came  to  see  me,  saying  that  he  must  have  ad- 
vice; some  one  must  tell  him  at  once  what  to 
do,  as  his  wife  was  in  the  state's  prison  serv- 
ing a  sentence  for  a  crime  which  he  himself 
had  committed.  He  had  seen  her  the  day 
before,  and  though  she  had  been  there  only  a 
month  he  was  convinced  that  she  was  develop- 
ing consumption.     She  was  ''only  seventeen, 


WEECKED    FOUNDATIONS  35 

and  couldn't  stand  the  hard  work  and  the 
'low  down'  women"  whom  she  had  for  com- 
panions. My  remark  that  a  girl  of  seventeen 
was  too  young  to  be  in  the  state  penitentiary 
brought  out  the  whole  wretched  story. 

He  had  been  unsteady  for  many  years  and 
the  despair  of  his  thoroughly  respectable  fam- 
ily who  had  sent  him  West  the  year  before. 
In  Arkansas  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  girl  of 
sixteen  and  married  her.    His  mother  was  far 
from  pleased,  but  had  finally  sent  him  money 
to  bring  his  bride  to  Chicago,  in  the  hope  that 
he  might  settle  there.     En  route  they  stopped 
at  a  small  town  for  the  naive  reason  that  he 
wanted  to  have  an  aching  tooth  pulled.     But 
the  tooth  gave  him  an  excellent  opportunity 
to  have  a  drink,   and  before  he  reached  the 
office  of  the  country  practitioner  he  was  in- 
toxicated.    As  they  passed  through  the  vesti- 
bule   he    stole    an    overcoat    hanging    there, 
although  the  little  wife  piteously  begged  him 
to    let    it   alone.      Out    of    sheer   bravado    he 
carried  it  across  his  arm  as  they  walked  down 
the   street,    and   was,   of   course,   immediately 
arrested  **with  the  goods  upon  him."    In  sheer 


36         YOUTH   AND   THE    CITY   STREETS 

terror  of  being  separated  from  her  husband, 
the  wife  insisted  that  she  had  been  an  accom- 
plice, and  together  they  were  put  into  the 
county  jail  awaiting  the  action  of  the  Grand 
Jury.  At  the  end  of  the  sixth  week,  on  one 
of  the  rare  occasions  when  they  were  permitted 
to  talk  to  each  other  through  the  grating  which 
separated  the  men's  visiting  quarters  from  the 
women's,  the  young  wife  told  her  husband 
that  she  made  up  her  mind  to  swear  that  she 
had  stolen  the  overcoat.  What  could  she  do 
if  he  were  sent  to  prison  and  she  were  left 
free?  She  was  afraid  to  go  to  his  people  and 
could  not  possibly  go  back  to  hers.  In  spite 
of  his  protest,  that  very  night  she  sent  for  the 
state's  attorney  and  made  a  full  confession, 
giving  her  age  as  eighteen  in  the  hope  of  mak- 
ing her  testimony  more  valuable.  From  that 
time  on  they  stuck  to  the  lie  through  the 
indictment,  the  trial  and  her  conviction. 
Apparently  it  had  seemed  to  him  only  a  well- 
arranged  plot  until  he  had  visited  the  peniten- 
tiary the  day  before,  and  had  really  seen  her 
piteous  plight.  Remorse  had  seized  him  at 
last,  and  he  was  ready  to  make  every  restitu- 


WBECKED    FOUNDATIONS  37 

tion.  She,  however,  had  no  notion  of  giving 
up— on  the  contrary,  as  she  realized  more 
clearly  what  prison  life  meant,  she  was  daily 
more  determined  to  spare  him  the  experience. 
Her  letters,  written  in  the  unformed  hand  of 
a  child— for  her  husband  had  himself  taught 
her  to  read  and  write — were  filled  with  a  riot 
of  self-abnegation,  the  martyr's  joy  as  he  feels 
the  iron  enter  the  flesh.  Thus  had  an  illiterate, 
neglected  girl  through  sheer  devotion  to  a 
worthless  sort  of  young  fellow  inclined  to 
drink,  entered  into  that  noble  company  of 
martyrs. 

When  girls  **go  wrong"  what  happens? 
How  has  this  tremendous  force,  valuable  and 
necessary  for  the  foundation  of  the  family,  be- 
come misdirected?  When  its  manifestations 
follow  the  legitimate  channels  of  wedded  life 
we  call  them  praiseworthy;  but  there  are  other 
manifestations  quite  outside  the  legal  and 
moral  channels  which  yet  compel  our  admira- 
tion. 

A  young  woman  of  my  acquaintance  was 
married  to  a  professional  criminal  named  Joe. 
Three  months  after  the  wedding  he  was  ar- 


38         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STEEETS 

rested  and  ''sent  up"  for  two  years.  Molly 
had  always  been  accustomed  to  many  lovers, 
but  she  remained  faithful  to  her  absent  hus- 
band for  a  year.  At  the  end  of  that  time  she 
obtained  a  divorce  which  the  state  law  makes 
easy  for  the  wife  of  a  convict,  and  married  a 
man  who  was  ''rich  and  respectable" — in  fact, 
he  owned  the  small  manufacturing  establish- 
ment in  which  her  mother  did  the  scrubbing. 
He  moved  his  bride  to  another  part  of  town 
six  miles  away,  provided  her  with  a  "steam- 
heated  flat,"  furniture  upholstered  in  "cut 
velvet,"  and  many  other  luxuries  of  which 
Molly  heretofore  had  only  dreamed.  One  day 
as  she  was  wheeling  a  handsome  baby  carriage 
up  and  down  the  prosperous  street,  her 
brother,  who  was  "Joe's  pal,"  came  to  tell 
her  that  Joe  was  "out,"  had  come  to  the  old 
tenement  and  was  "mighty  sore"  because  "she 
had  gone  back  on  him."  Without  a  moment's 
hesitation  Molly  turned  the  baby  carriage  in 
the  direction  of  her  old  home  and  never  stopped 
wheeling  it  until  she  had  compassed  the  entire 
six  miles.  She  and  Joe  rented  the  old  room 
and  went  to  housekeeping.     The  rich  and  re- 


WEECKED   FOUNDATIONS  39 

spectable  husband  made  every  effort  to 
persuade  her  to  come  back,  and  then  another 
series  of  efforts  to  recover  his  child,  before  he 
set  her  free  through  a  court  proceeding.  Joe, 
however,  steadfastly  refused  to  marry  her,  still 
"sore"  because  she  had  not  ** stood  by."  As 
he  worked  only  intermittently,  and  was  too 
closely  supervised  by  the  police  to  do  much 
at  his  old  occupation,  Molly  was  obliged  to 
support  the  humble  menage  by  scrubbing  in 
a  neighboring  lodging  house  and  by  washing 
*'the  odd  shirts"  of  the  lodgers.  For  five 
years,  during  which  time  two  children  were 
born,  when  she  was  constantly  subjected  to 
the  taunts  of  her  neighbors,  and  when  all  the 
charitable  agencies  refused  to  give  help  to 
such  an  irregular  household,  Molly  happily 
went  on  her  course  with  no  shade  of  regret  or 
sorrow.  **I'm  all  right  as  long  as  Joe  keeps 
out  of  the  jug,"  was  her  slogan  of  happiness, 
low  in  tone,  perhaps,  but  genuine  and  **game." 
Her  surroundings  were  as  sordid  as  possible, 
consisting  of  a  constantly  changing  series  of 
cheap  "furnished  rooms"  in  which  the  bat- 
tered baby  carriage  was  the  sole  witness  of 


40         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

better  days.  But  Molly's  heart  was  full  of 
courage  and  happiness,  and  she  was  never 
desolate  until  her  criminal  lover  was  *'sent 
up"  again,  this  time  on  a  really  serious  charge. 

These  irregular  manifestations  form  a  link 
between  that  world  in  which  each  one  struggles 
to  "live  respectable,"  and  that  nether  world 
in  which  are  also  found  cases  of  devotion  and 
of  enduring  affection  arising  out  of  the  midst 
of  the  folly  and  the  shame.  The  girl  there 
who  through  all  tribulation  supports  her  rec- 
reant 'Uover,"  or  the  girl  who  overcomes 
her  drink  and  opium  habits,  who  renounces 
luxuries  and  goes  back  to  uninteresting  daily 
toil  for  the  sake  of  the  good  opinion  of  a  man 
who  wishes  her  to  *' appear  decent,"  although  he 
never  means  to  marry  her,  these  are  also  impres- 
sive. 

One  of  our  earliest  experiences  at  Hull-House 
had  to  do  with  a  lover  of  this  type  and  the 
charming  young  girl  who  had  become  fatally 
attached  to  him.  I  can  see  her  now  running 
for  protection  up  the  broad  steps  of  the 
columned  piazza  then  surrounding  Hull-House. 
Her  slender  figure  was  trembling  with  fright, 


WRECKED    FOUNDATIONS  41 

her  tear-covered  face  swollen  and  bloodstained 
from  the  blows  he  had  dealt  her.    *'He  is  apt 
to  abuse  me  when  he  is  drunk/'  was  the  only 
explanation,  and  that  given  by  way  of  apology, 
which  could  be  extracted  from  her.    When  we 
discovered  that  there  had  been  no  marriage 
ceremony,  that  there  were  no  living  children, 
that  she   had   twice   narrowly   escaped  losing 
her  life,  it  seemed  a  simple  matter  to  insist  that 
the  relation  should  be  broken  off.     She  apa- 
thetically  remained   at   Hull-House   for   a   few 
weeks,  but  when  her  strength  had  somewhat 
returned,   when   her   lover   began   to    recover 
from  his  prolonged  debauch  of  -whiskey  and 
opium,   she   insisted   upon   going  home    every 
day  to  prepare  his  meals  and  to  see  that  the 
little  tenement  was  clean  and  comfortable  be- 
cause "Pierre  is  always  so  sick  and  w^eak  after 
one  of  those  long  ones."    This  of  course  meant 
that  she  was  drifting  back  to  him,  and  when 
she  was  at  last  restrained  by  that  moral  com- 
pulsion,   by   that    overwhelming    of    another's 
will  which  is  always  so  ruthlessly  exerted  by 
those  who  are  conscious  that  virtue  is  strug- 


42         YOUTH   AND   THE    CITY   STREETS 

gling  with  vice,  her  mind  gave  way  and  she 
became  utterly  distraught. 

A  poor  little  Ophelia,  I  met  her  one  night  wan- 
dering in  the  hall  half  dressed  in  the  tawdry 
pink  gown  *'that  Pierre  liked  best  of  all"  and 
groping  on  the  blank  wall  to  find  the  door 
which  might  permit  her  to  escape  to  her  lover. 
In  a  few  days  it  was  obvious  that  hospital 
restraint  was  necessary,  but  when  she  finally 
recovered  we  were  obliged  to  admit  that  there 
is  no  civic  authority  which  can  control  the 
acts  of  a  girl  of  eighteen.  From  the  hospital 
she  followed  her  heart  directly  back  to  Pierre, 
who  had  in  the  meantime  moved  out  of  the 
Hull-House  neighborhood.  We  knew  later  that 
he  had  degraded  the  poor  child  still  further 
by  obliging  her  to  earn  money  for  his  drugs  by 
that  last  method  resorted  to  by  a  degenerate 
man  to  whom  a  woman's  devotion  still  clings. 

It  is  inevitable  that  a  force  which  is  enduring 
enough  to  withstand  the  discouragements,  the 
suffering  and  privation  of  daily  living,  strenu- 
ous enough  to  overcome  and  rectify  the 
impulses  which  make  for  greed  and  self-indul- 
gence, should  be  able,  even  under  untoward 


WEECKED   FOITNTDATIONS  43 

conditions,  to  lift  up  and  transfigure  those  who 
are  really  within  its  grasp  and  set  them  in 
marked  contrast  to  those  who  are  merely  play- 
ing a  game  with  it  or  using  it  for  gain.  But 
what  has  happened  to  these  wretched  girls? 
Why  has  this  beneficent  current  cast  them 
upon  the  shores  of  death  and  destruction  when 
it  should  have  carried  them  into  the  safe  port 
of  domesticity?  Through  whose  fault  has  this 
basic  emotion  served  merely  to  trick  and  de- 
ride them? 

Older  nations  have  taken  a  well  defined  line 
of  action  in  regard  to  it. 

Among  the  Hull-House  neighbors  are  many 
of  the  Latin  races  who  employ  a  careful  chap- 
eronage  over  their  marriageable  daughters  and 
provide  husbands  for  them  at  an  early  age. 
"My  father  will  get  a  husband  for  me  this 
winter,"  announces  Angelina,  whose  father  has 
brought  her  to  a  party  at  Hull-House,  and  she 
adds  with  a  toss  of  her  head,  ''I  saw  two  al- 
ready, but  my  father  says  they  haven't 
saved  enough  money  to  marry  me."  She 
feels  quite  as  content  in  her  father's  wis- 
dom   and     ability    to    provide    her    with    a 


44         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STEEETS 

husband  as  she  does  in  his  capacity  to  es- 
cort her  home  safely  from  the  party.  He 
does  not  permit  her  to  cross  the  threshold 
after  nightfall  unaccompanied  by  himself,  and 
unless  the  dowry  and  the  husband  are  provided 
before  she  is  eighteen  he  will  consider  himself 
derelict  in  his  duty  towards  her.  *'Francesca 
can't  even  come  to  the  Sodality  meeting  this 
winter.  She  lives  only  across  from  the  church 
but  her  mother  won't  let  her  come  because  her 
father  is  out  West  working  on  a  railroad,"  is 
a  comment  one  often  hears.  The  system  works 
well  only  when  it  is  carried  logically  through 
to  the  end  of  an  early  marriage  with  a  prop- 
erly-provided husband. 

Even  with  the  Latin  races,  when  the  system 
is  tried  in  America  it  often  breaks  down,  and 
when  the  Anglo-Saxons  anywhere  imitate  this 
regime  it  is  usually  utterly  futile.  They  fol- 
low the  first  part  of  the  program  as  far  as 
repression  is  concerned,  but  they  find  it  im- 
possible to  follow  the  second  because  all  sorts 
of  inherited  notions  deter  them.  The  repressed 
girl,  if  she  is  not  one  of  the  languishing  type, 
takes  matters  into  her  own  hands,  and  finds  her 


WRECKED    FOUNDATIONS  45 

pleasures  in  illicit  ways,  without  her  parents' 
knowledge.    "I  had  no  idea  my  daughter  was 
going  to  public  dances.    She  always  told  me  she 
was  spending  the  night  with  her  cousin  on  the 
South  Side.    I  hadn't  a  suspicion  of  the  truth," 
many  a  broken-hearted  mother  explains.     An 
officer  who  has  had  a  long  experience  in  the 
Juvenile  Court  of  Chicago,  and  has  listened  to 
hundreds   of   cases   involving   wayward    girls, 
gives   it   as  his   deliberate   impression   that   a 
large  majority  of  cases  are  from  families  where 
the  discipline  had  been  rigid,  where  they  had 
taken  but  half  of  the  convention  of  the  Old 
World  and  left  the  other  half. 

Unless  we  mean  to  go  back  to  these  Old 
World  customs  which  are  already  hopelessly 
broken,  there  would  seem  to  be  but  one  path 
open  to  us  in  America.  That  path  implies 
freedom  for  the  young  people  made  safe  only 
through  their  own  self-control.  This,  in  turn, 
must  be  based  upon  knowledge  and  habits  of 
clean  companionship.  In  point  of  fact  no 
course  between  the  two  is  safe  in  a  modern 
city,  and  in  the  most  crowded  quarters  the 
young  people   themselves  are  working  out  a 


46  YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

protective  code  which  reminds  one  of  the  in- 
stinctive protection  that  the  free-ranging  child 
in  the  country  learns  in  regard  to  poisonous 
plants  and  ''marshy  places/'  or  of  the  cautions 
and  abilities  that  the  mountain  child  develops 
in  regard  to  ice  and  precipices.  This  state- 
ment, of  course,  does  not  hold  good  concern- 
ing a  large  number  of  children  in  every  crowded 
city  quarter  who  may  be  classed  as  degener- 
ates, the  children  of  careless  or  dissolute 
mothers  who  fall  into  all  sorts  of  degenerate 
habits  and  associations  before  childhood  is 
passed,  who  cannot  be  said  to  have  ''gone 
wrong"  at  any  one  moment  because  they  have 
never  been  in  the  right  path  even  of  innocent 
childhood;  but  the  statement  is  sound  concern- 
ing thousands  of  girls  who  go  to  and  from 
work  every  day  with  crowds  of  young  men 
who  meet  them  again  and  again  in  the  oc- 
casional evening  pleasures  of  the  more  decent 
dance  halls  or  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  the 
parks. 

The  mothers  who  are  of  most  use  to  these 
normal  city  working  girls  are  the  mothers  who 
develop  a  sense  of  companionship  with  the 


WEECKED    FOUNDATIONS  47 

changing  experiences  of  their  daughters,  who 
are  willing  to  modify  ill-fitting  social  conven- 
tions into  rules  of  conduct  which  are  of  actual 
service  to  their  children  in  their  daily  lives  of 
factory  work  and  of  city  amusements.  Those 
mothers,  through  their  sympathy  and  adapt- 
ability, substitute  keen  present  interests  and 
activity  for  solemn  warnings  and  restraint, 
self-expression  for  repression.  Their  vigorous 
family  life  allies  itself  by  a  dozen  bonds  to  the 
educational,  the  industrial  and  the  recreational 
organizations  of  the  modern  city,  and  makes 
for  intelligent  understanding,  industrial  effici- 
ency and  sane  social  pleasures. 

By  all  means  let  us  preserve  the  safety  of 
the  home,  but  let  us  also  make  safe  the  street 
in  which  the  majority  of  our  young  people 
find  their  recreation  and  form  their  permanent 
relationships.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the 
great  processes  of  social  life  develop  themselves 
through  influences  of  which  each  participant 
is  unconscious  as  he  struggles  alone  and  un- 
aided in  the  strength  of  a  current  which  seizes 
him  and  bears  him  along  with  myriads  of 
others,  a  current  which  may  so  easily  wreck 
the  very  foundations  of  domesticity. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  QUEST  FOR  ADVENTURE 


CHAPTER  in 
THE  QUEST  FOR  ADVENTURE 

A  certain  number  of  the  outrages  upon  the 
spirit  of  youth  may  be  traced  to  degenerate  or 
careless  parents  who  totally  neglect  their  re- 
sponsibilities; a  certain  other  large  number  of 
wrongs  are  due  to  sordid  men  and  women  who 
deliberately  use  the  legitimate  pleasure-seeking 
of  young  people  as  lures  into  vice.  There  re- 
mains, however,  a  third  very  large  class  of 
offenses  for  which  the  community  as  a  whole 
must  be  held  responsible  if  it  would  escape  the 
condemnation,  ''Woe  unto  him  by  whom  of- 
fenses come."  This  class  of  offenses  is  trace- 
able to  a  dense  ignorance  on  the  part  of  the 
average  citizen  as  to  the  requirements  of 
youth,  and  to  a  persistent  blindness  on  the  part 
of  educators  as  to  youth's  most  obvious  needs. 

The  young  people  are  overborne  by  their 
own  undirected  and  misguided  energies.  A 
mere  temperamental  outbreak  in  a  brief  period 

51 

LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
M  URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


52        YOUTH   AND   THE    CITY   STREETS 

of  obstreperousness  exposes  a  promising  boy  to 
arrest  and  imprisonment,  an  accidental  com- 
bination of  circumstances  too  complicated 
and  overwhelming  to  be  coped  with  by  an 
immature  mind,  condemns  a  growing  lad  to  a 
criminal  career.  These  impulsive  misdeeds 
may  be  thought  of  as  dividing  into  two  great 
trends  somewhat  obscurely  analogous  to  the 
two  historic  divisions  of  man's  motive  power, 
for  we  are  told  that  all  the  activities  of  primi- 
tive man  and  even  those  of  his  more  civilized 
successors  may  be  broadly  traced  to  the  im- 
pulsion of  two  elemental  appetites.  The  first 
drove  him  to  the  search  for  food,  the  hunt 
developing  into  war  with  neighboring  tribes 
and  finally  broadening  into  barter  and  modern 
commerce;  the  second  urged  him  to  secure 
and  protect  a  mate,  developing  into  domestic 
life,  widening  into  the  building  of  homes  and 
cities,  into  the  cultivation  of  the  arts  and  a 
care  for  beauty. 

In  the  life  of  each  boy  there  comes  a  time 
when  these  primitive  instincts  urge  him  to 
action,  when  he  is  himself  frightened  by  their 
undefined  power.    He  is  faced  by  the  necessity 


THE    QUEST   FOR   ADVENTURE  53 

of  taming  them,  of  reducing  them  to  manage- 
able impulses  just  at  the  moment  when  *'a 
boy*s  will  is  the  wind's  will,"  or,  in  the  words 
of  a  veteran  educator,  at  the  time  when  "it 
is  almost  impossible  for  an  adult  to  realize  the 
boy's  irresponsibility  and  even  moral  neuras- 
thenia." That  the  boy  often  fails  may  be 
traced  in  those  pitiful  figures  which  show  that 
between  two  and  three  times  as  much  incorrigi- 
bility occurs  between  the  ages  of  thirteen  and 
sixteen  as  at  any  other  period  of  life. 

The  second  division  of  motive  power  has 
been  treated  in  the  preceding  chapter.  The 
present  chapter  is  an  effort  to  point  out  the 
necessity  for  an  understanding  of  the  first  trend 
of  motives  if  we  would  minimize  the  tempta- 
tions of  the  struggle  and  free  the  boy  from  the 
constant  sense  of  the  stupidity  and  savagery 
of  life.  To  set  his  feet  in  the  worn  path  of 
civilization  is  not  an  easy  task,  but  it  may 
give  us  a  clue  for  the  undertaking  to  trace  his 
misdeeds  to  the  unrecognized  and  primitive 
spirit  of  adventure  corresponding  to  the  old 
activity  of  the  hunt,  of  warfare,  and  of  dis- 
covery. 


54         YOUTH    AXD    THE    CITY    STREETS 

To  do  this  intelligently,   we  shall  have  to 
remember     that    many    boys     in    the     years 
immediately  following  school  find  no  restraint 
either  in  tradition  or  character.     They  drop 
learning   as   a   childish   thing   and  look  upon 
school  as  a  tiresome  task  that  is  finished.  They 
demand  pleasure  as  the  right  of  one  who  earns 
his  own  living.    They  have  developed  no  capa- 
city for  recreation  demanding  mental  effort  or 
even  muscular  skill,  and  are  obliged  to  seek 
only  that   depending  upon   sight,   sound   and 
taste.     Many  of  them  begin  to  pay  board  to 
their  mothers,  and  make  the  best  bargain  they 
can,  that  more  money  may  be  left  to  spend  in 
the  evening.    They  even  bait  the  excitement  of 
** losing  a  job,''  and  often  provoke  a  foreman 
if   only   to   see   ''how  much  he   will   stand." 
They  are  constitutionally  unable  to  enjoy  any- 
thing  continuously  and   follow  their  vagrant 
wills     unhindered.       Unfortunately     the     city 
lends  itself  to  this  distraction.    At  the  best,  it 
is  difficult  to  know  what  to  select  and  what 
to  eliminate  as  objects  of  attention  among  its 
thronged  streets,  its  glittering  shops,  its  gaudy 
advertisements  of  shows  and  amusements.    It 


THE    QUEST    FOR    ADVENTURE  55 

is  perhaps  to  the  credit  of  many  city  boys  that 
the  very  first  puerile  spirit  of  adventure  look- 
ing abroad  in  the  world  for  material  upon  which 
to  exercise  itself,  seems  to  center  about  the 
railroad.  The  impulse  is  not  unlike  that  which 
excites  the  coast-dwelling  lad  to  dream  of 

"The  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships 
And  the  magic  of  the  sea." 

I  cite  here  a  dozen  charges  upon  which  boys 
were  brought  into  the  Juvenile  Court  of  Chi- 
cago, all  of  which  might  be  designated  as  deeds 
of  adventure.  A  surprising  number,  as  the 
reader  will  observe,  are  connected  with  rail- 
roads. They  are  taken  from  the  court  records 
and  repeat  the  actual  words  used  by  police 
officers,  irate  neighbors,  or  discouraged  par- 
ents, when  the  boys  were  brought  before  the 
judge.  (1)  Building  fires  along  the  railroad 
tracks;  (2)  flagging  trains;  (3)  throwing  stones 
at  moving  train  windows;  (4)  shooting  at  the 
actors  in  the  Olympic  Theatre  with  sling  shots; 
(5)  breaking  signal  lights  on  the  railroad;  (6) 
stealing  linseed  oil  barrels  from  the  railroad 
to  make  a  fire;  (7)  taking  waste  from  an  axle 


56         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STEEETS 

box  and  burning  it  upon  the  railroad  tracks; 
(8)  turning  a  switch  and  running  a  street  car 
off  the  track;  (9)  staying  away  from  home  to 
sleep  in  barns;  (10)  setting  fire  to  a  barn  in 
order  to  see  the  fire  engines  come  up  the  street ; 
(11)  knocking  down  signs;  (12)  cutting  West- 
ern Union  cable. 

Another  dozen  charges  also  taken  from  actual 
court  records  might  be  added  as  illustrating 
the  spirit  of  adventure,  for  although  stealing 
is  involved  in  all  of  them,  the  deeds  were  doubt- 
less inspired  much  more  by  the  adventurous 
impulse  than  by  a  desire  for  the  loot  itself: 

(1)  Stealing   thirteen   pigeons   from   a   barn; 

(2)  stealing  a  bathing  suit;  (3)  stealing  a  tent; 
(4)  stealing  ten  dollars  from  mother  with  which 
to  buy  a  revolver;  (5)  stealing  a  horse  blanket 
to  use  at  night  when  it  was  cold  sleeping 
on  the  wharf;  (6)  breaking  a  seal  on  a  freight 
car  to  steal  "grain  for  chickens";  (7)  stealing 
apples  from  a  freight  car;  (8)  stealing  a  candy 
peddler's  wagon  *'to  be  full  up  just  for  once"; 
(9)  stealing  a  hand  car;  (10)  stealing  a  bicycle 
to  take  a  ride;  (11)  stealing  a  horse  and  buggy 
and  driving  twenty-five  miles  into  the  country ; 


THE   QUEST   FOR   ADVENTURE  57 

(12)  stealing  a  stray  horse  on  the  prairie  and 
trjnng  to  sell  it  for  twenty  dollars. 

Of  another  dozen  it  might  be  claimed  that 
they  were  also  due  to  this  same  adventurous 
spirit,  although  the  first  six  were  classed  as 
disorderly  conduct:  (1)  Calling  a  neighbor  a 
"scab";  (2)  breaking  down  a  fence;  (3)  flip- 
ping cars;  (4)  picking  up  coal  from  railroad 
tracks;  (5)  carrying  a  concealed  "dagger," 
and  stabbing  a  playmate  with  it;  (6)  throwing 
stones  at  a  railroad  employee.  The  next  three 
were  called  vagrancy:  (1)  Loafing  on  the 
docks;  (2)  "sleeping  out"  nights;  (3)  getting 
"wandering  spells."  One,  designated  petty 
larceny,  was  cutting  telephone  wires  under  the 
sidewalk  and  selling  them;  another,  called 
burglary,  was  taking  locks  off  from  basement 
doors;  and  the  last  one  bore  the  dignified  title 
of  "resisting  an  officer"  because  the  boy,  who 
was  riding  on  the  fender  of  a  street  car,  refused 
to   move  when  an  officer  ordered  him  off. 

Of  course  one  easily  recalls  other  cases  in 
which  the  manifestations  were  negative.  I 
remember  an  exasperated  and  frightened 
mother  who  took  a  boy  of  fourteen  into  court 


58         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

upon  the  charge  of  incorrigibility.  She  ac- 
cused him  of  "shooting  craps,"  ''smoking 
cigarettes,"  "keeping  bad  company,"  "being 
idle."  The  mother  regrets  it  now,  however, 
for  she  thinks  that  taking  a  boy  into  court 
only  gives  him  a  bad  name,  and  that  "the 
police  are  down  on  a  boy  who  has  once  been  in 
court,  and  that  that  makes  it  harder  for  him." 
She  hardly  recognizes  her  once  troublesome 
charge  in  the  steady  young  man  of  nineteen 
who  brings  home  all  his  wages  and  is  the  pride 
and  stay  of  her  old  age. 

I  recall  another  boy  who  worked  his  way  to 
New  York  and  back  again  to  Chicago  before 
he  was  quite  fourteen  years  old,  skilfully  escap- 
ing the  truant  officers  as  well  as  the  police  and 
special  railroad  detectives.  He  told  his  story 
with  great  pride,  but  always  modestly  admitted 
that  he  could  never  have  done  it  if  his  father 
had  not  been  a  locomotive  engineer  so  that  he 
had  played  around  railroad  tracks  and  "was 
onto  them  ever  since  he  was  a  small  kid." 

There  are  many  of  these  adventurous  boys 
who  exhibit  a  curious  incapacity  for  any  effort 
which  requires  sustained  energy.     They  show 


THE    QUEST    FOR    ADVENTUEE  59 

an  absolute  lack  of  interest  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  what  they  undertake,  so  marked  that 
if  challenged  in  the  midst  of  their  activity, 
they  will  be  quite  unable  to  tell  you  the  end 
they  have  in  view.  Then  there  are  those  tramp 
boys  who  are  the  despair  of  every  one  who 
tries  to  deal  with  them. 

I  remember  the  case  of  a  boy  who  traveled 
almost  around  the  world  in  the  years  lying  be- 
tween the  ages  of  eleven  and  fifteen.  He  had 
lived  for  six  months  in  Honolulu  where  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  settle  when  the  irresist- 
ible "Wanderlust"  again  seized  him.  He  was 
scrupulously  neat  in  his  habits  and  something 
of  a  dandy  in  appearance.  He  boasted  that  he 
had  never  stolen,  although  he  had  been  arrested 
several  times  on  the  charge  of  vagrancy,  a 
fate  which  befell  him  in  Chicago  and  landed 
him  in  the  Detention  Home  connected  with  the 
Juvenile  Court.  The  judge  gained  a  personal 
hold  upon  him,  and  the  lad  tried  with  all  the 
powers  of  his  untrained  moral  nature  to  "make 
good  and  please  the  judge."  Monotonous  fac- 
tory work  was  not  to  be  thought  of  in  connec- 
tion with  him,  but  his  good  friend  the  judge 


60         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

found  a  place  for  him  as  a  bell-boy  in  a  men's 
club,  where  it  was  hoped  that  the  uniform  and 
the  variety  of  experience  might  enable  him  to 
take  the  first  steps  toward  regular  pay  and  a 
settled  life.  Through  another  bell-boy,  how- 
ever, he  heard  of  the  find  of  a  diamond 
carelessly  left  in  one  of  the  wash  rooms  of  the 
club.  The  chance  to  throw  out  mysterious 
hints  of  its  whereabouts,  to  bargain  for  its 
restoration,  to  tell  of  great  diamond  deals  he 
had  heard  of  in  his  travels,  inevitably  laid 
him  open  to  suspicion  which  resulted  in  his 
dismissal,  although  he  had  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter  beyond  gloating  over  its  ad- 
venturous aspects.  In  spite  of  skilful  efforts 
made  to  detain  him,  he  once  more  started  on 
his  travels,  throwing  out  such  diverse  hints  as 
that  of  *'a  trip  into  Old  Mexico,"  or  "follow- 
ing up  Roosevelt  into  Africa." 

There  is  an  entire  series  of  difficulties  di- 
rectly traceable  to  the  foolish  and  adventurous 
persistence  of  carrying  loaded  firearms.  The 
morning  paper  of  the  day  in  which  I  am  writ- 
ing records  the  following: 


THE    QUEST    FOR    ADVENTURE  61 

"A  party  of  boys,  led  by  Daniel  O'Brien,  thirteen 
years  old^  had  gathered  in  front  of  the  house  and 
O  'Brien  was  throwing  stones  at  Nieczgodzki  in  revenge 
for  a  whipping  that  he  received  at  his  hands  about  a 
month  ago.  The  Polish  boy  ordered  them  away  and 
threatened  to  go  into  the  house  and  get  a  revolver  if 
they  did  not  stop.  Pfister,  one  of  the  boys  in  O'Brien's 
party,  called  him  a  coward,  and  when  he  pulled  a  re- 
volver from  his  pocket,  dared  him  to  put  it  away  and 
meet  him  in  a  fist  fight  in  the  street.  Instead  of  accept- 
ing the  challenge,  Nieczgodzki  aimed  his  revolver  at 
Pfister  and  fired.  The  bullet  crashed  through  the  top 
of  his  head  and  entered  the  brain.  He  was  rushed  to 
the  Alexian  Brothers'  Hospital,  but  died  a  short  time 
after  being  received  there.  Nieczgodzki  was  arrested 
and  held  without  bail." 

This  tale  could  be  duplicated  almost  every 
morning ;  what  might  be  merely  a  boyish  scrap 
is  turned  into  a  tragedy  because  some  boy  has 
a   revolver. 

Many  citizens  in  Chicago  have  been  made 
heartsick  during  the  past  month  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  a  boy  of  nineteen  was  lodged  in  the 
county  jail  awaiting  the  death  penalty.  He 
had  shot  and  killed  a  policeman  during  the 
scrimmage  of  an  arrest,  although  the  offense 
for  which  he  was  being  "taken  in"  was  a  tri- 
fling one.  His  parents  came  to  Chicago 
twenty  years  ago  from  a  little  farm  in  Ohio, 


62         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

the  best  type  of  Americans,  whom  we  boast  to 
be  the  backbone  of  our  cities.  The  mother, 
who  has  aged  and  sickened  since  the  trial, 
can  only  say  that  "Davie  was  never  a  bad  boy 
until  about  five  years  ago  when  he  began  to  go 
with  this  gang  who  are  always  looking  out 
for  fun/' 

Then  there  are  those  piteous  cases  due  to  a 
perfervid  imagination  which  fails  to  find  ma- 
terial suited  to  its  demands.  I  can  recall  mis- 
adventures of  children  living  within  a  few 
blocks  of  Hull-House  which  may  well  fill  with 
chagrin  those  of  us  who  are  trying  to  admin- 
ister to  their  deeper  needs.  I  remember  a 
Greek  boy  of  fifteen  who  was  arrested  for 
attempting  to  hang  a  young  Turk,  stirred  by 
some  vague  notion  of  carrying  on  a  traditional 
warfare,  and  of  adding  another  page  to  the 
heroic  annals  of  Greek  history.  When  sifted, 
the  incident  amounted  to  little  more  than  a 
graphic  threat  and  the  lad  was  dismissed  by  the 
court,  covered  with  confusion  and  remorse  that 
he  had  brought  disgrace  upon  the  name  of 
Greece  when  he  had  hoped  to  add  to  its  glory. 

I  remember  with  a  lump  in  my  throat  the 


THE    QUEST    FOE   ADVENTURE  63 

Bohemian  boy  of  thirteen  who  committed  sui- 
cide  because   he   could  not  ''make   good"  in 
school,  and  wished  to  show  that  he  too  had 
*'the  stuff"  in  him,  as  stated  in  the  piteous 
little  letter  left  behind.    This  same  love  of  ex- 
citement, the  desire  to  jump  out  of  the  hum- 
drum experience  of  life,  also  induces  boys  to 
experiment  with  drinks  and   drugs  to  a  sur- 
prising extent.    For  several  years  the  residents 
of  Hull-House  struggled  with  the  difficulty  of 
prohibiting  the  sale  of  cocaine  to  minors  under 
a  totally  inadequate  code  of  legislation,  which 
has  at  last  happily  been  changed  to  one  more 
effective    and    enforcible.      The    long    effort 
brought  us  into  contact  with  dozens  of  boys 
who  had  become  victims  of  the  cocaine  habit. 
The  first  group  of  these  boys  was  discovered  in 
the  house  of  "Army  George."     This  one-armed 
man  sold  cocaine  on  the  streets  and  also  in  the 
levee  district  by  a  system  of  signals  so  that  the 
word  cocaine  need  never  be  mentioned,  and  the 
style  and  size  of  the  package  was  changed  so 
often  that  even  a  vigilant  police  found  it  hard 
to  locate  it.    What  could  be  more  exciting  to  a 
lad    than    a    traffic    in    a    contraband    article, 


64         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

carried  on  in  this  mysterious  fashion  ?  I  recall 
our  experience  with  a  gang  of  boys  living  on 
a  neighboring  street.  There  were  eight  of 
them  altogether,  the  eldest  seventeen  years  of 
age,  the  youngest  thirteen,  and  they  practically 
lived  the  life  of  vagrants.  What  answered  to 
their  club  house  was  a  corner  lot  on  Harrison 
and  Desplaines  Streets,  strewn  with  old  boilers, 
in  which  they  slept  by  night  and  many  times 
by  day.  The  gang  was  brought  to  the  atten- 
tion of  Hull-House  during  the  summer  of  1904 
by  a  distracted  mother,  who  suspected  that  they 
were  all  addicted  to  some  drug.  She  was  terri- 
bly frightened  over  the  state  of  her  youngest 
boy  of  thirteen,  who  was  hideously  emaciated 
and  his  mind  reduced  almost  to  vacancy.  I 
remember  the  poor  woman  as  she  sat  in  the 
reception  room  at  Hull-House,  holding  the  un- 
conscious boy  in  her  arms,  rocking  herself  back 
and  forth  in  her  fright  and  despair,  saying: 
**I  have  seen  them  go  with  the  drink,  and  eat 
the  hideous  opium,  but  I  never  knew  anything 
like  this." 

An  investigation   showed  that  cocaine  had 
first  been  offered  to  these  boys  on  the  street 


THE    QUEST    FOR   ADVENTURE  65 

by  a  colored  man,  an  agent  of  a  drug  store,  who 
had  given  them  samples  and  urged  them  to 
try  it.  In  three  or  four  months  they  had  be- 
come hopelessly  addicted  to  its  use,  and  at  the 
end  of  six  months,  when  they  were  brought  to 
Hull-House,  they  were  all  in  a  critical  condi- 
tion. At  that  time  not  one  of  them  was  either 
going  to  school  or  working.  They  stole  from 
their  parents,  *' swiped  junk,"  pawned  their 
clothes  and  shoes, — did  any  desperate  thing  to 
**get  the  dope,"  as  they  called  it. 

Of  course  they  continually  required  more, 
and  had  spent  as  much  as  eight  dollars  a  night 
for  cocaine,  which  they  used  to  **  share  and 
share  alike."  It  sounds  like  a  large  amount, 
but  it  really  meant  only  four  doses  each  during 
the  night,  as  at  that  time  they  were  taking 
twenty-five  cents'  worth  at  once  if  they  could 
possibly  secure  it.  The  boys  would  tell  no- 
thing for  three  or  four  days  after  they  were 
discovered,  in  spite  of  the  united  efforts  of 
their  families,  the  police,  and  the  residents  of 
Hull-House.  But  finally  the  superior  boy  of 
the  gang,  the  manliest  and  the  least  debauched, 
told  his  tale,  and  the  others  followed  in  quick 
5 


66         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

succession.  They  were  willing  to  go  some- 
where to  be  helped,  and  were  even  eager  if 
they  could  go  together,  and  finally  seven  of 
them  were  sent  to  the  Presbyterian  Hospital 
for  four  weeks'  treatment  and  afterwards  all 
went  to  the  country  together  for  six  weeks 
more.  The  emaciated  child  gained  twenty 
pounds  during  his  sojourn  in  the  hospital,  the 
head  of  which  testified  that  at  least  three  of  the 
boys  could  have  stood  but  little  more  of  the 
irregular  living  and  doping.  At  the  present 
moment  they  are  all,  save  one,  doing  well,  al- 
though they  were  rescued  so  late  that  they 
seemed  to  have  but  little  chance.  One  is  still 
struggling  with  the  appetite  on  an  Iowa  farm 
and  dares  not  trust  himself  in  the  city  because 
he  knows  too  well  how  cocaine  may  be  pro- 
cured in  spite  of  better  legislation.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  these  boys  could  ever  have 
been  pulled  through  unless  they  had  been  al- 
lowed to  keep  together  through  the  hospital 
and  convalescing  period, — unless  we  had  been 
able  to  utilize  the  gang  spirit  and  to  turn  its 
collective  force  towards  overcoming  the  desire 
for  the  drug. 


THE    QUEST    FOR   ADVENTURE  67 

The  desire  to  dream  and  see  visions  also 
plays  an  important  part  with  tne  boys  who 
habitually  use  cocaine.  I  recall  a  small  hut 
used  by  boys  for  this  purpose.  They  washed 
dishes  in  a  neighboring  restaurant  and  as  soon 
as  they  had  earned  a  few  cents  they  invested  in 
cocaine  which  they  kept  pinned  underneath 
their  suspenders.  When  they  had  accumulated 
enough  for  a  real  debauch  they  went  to  this 
hut  and  for  several  days  were  dead  to  the  out- 
side world.  One  boy  told  me  that  in  his  dreams 
he  saw  large  rooms  paved  with  gold  and  silver 
money,  the  walls  papered  with  greenbacks,  and 
that  he  took  away  in  buckets  all  that  he  could 
carry. 

This  desire  for  adventure  also  seizes  girls. 
A  group  of  girls  ranging  in  age  from  twelve  to 
seventeen  was  discovered  in  Chicago  last  June, 
two  of  whom  were  being  trained  by  older  women 
to  open  tills  in  small  shops,  to  pick  pockets,  to 
remove  handkerchiefs,  furs  and  purses  and 
to  lift  merchandise  from  the  counters  of  de- 
partment stores.  All  the  articles  stolen  were 
at  once  taken  to  their  teachers  and  the  girb 
themselves  received   no   remuneration,   except 


68         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

occasional  sprees  to  the  theaters  or  other  places 
of  amusement.  The  girls  gave  no  coherent 
reason  for  their  actions  beyond  the  statement 
that  they  liked  the  excitement  and  the  fun 
of  it.  Doubtless  to  the  thrill  of  danger  was 
added  the  pleasure  and  interest  of  being  daily 
in  the  shops  and  the  glitter  of  "down  town.'* 
The  boys  are  more  indifferent  to  this  down- 
town life,  and  are  apt  to  carry  on  their  adven- 
tures on  the  docks,  the  railroad  tracks  or  best 
of  all  upon  the  unoccupied  prairie. 

This  inveterate  demand  of  youth  that  life 
shall  afford  a  large  element  of  excitement  is  in 
a  measure  well  founded.  We  know  of  course 
that  it  is  necessary  to  accept  excitement  as  an 
inevitable  part  of  recreation,  that  the  first  step 
in  recreation  is  "that  excitement  which  stirs 
the  worn  or  sleeping  centers  of  a  man's  body 
and  mind."  It  is  only  when  it  is  followed  by 
nothing  else  that  it  defeats  its  own  end,  that 
it  uses  up  strength  and  does  not  create  it.  In 
the  actual  experience  of  these  boys  the  excite- 
ment has  demoralized  them  and  led  them  into 
law-breaking.  When,  however,  they  seek  legit- 
imate pleasure,  and  say  with  great  pride  that 


THE    QUEST    FOR   ADVENTURE  69 

they  are  ** ready  to  pay  for  it,"  what  they  find 
is  legal  but  scarcely  more  wholesome,— it  is 
still  merely  excitement.  ''Looping  the  loop'* 
amid  shrieks  of  simulated  terror  or  dancing  in 
disorderly  saloon  halls,  are  perhaps  the  natural 
reactions  to  a  day  spent  in  noisy  factories  and 
in  trolley  cars  whirling  through  the  distracting 
streets,  but  the  city  which  permits  them  to  be 
the  acme  of  pleasure  and  recreation  to  its  young 
people,  commits  a  grievous  mistake. 

May  we  not  assume  that  this  love  for  excite- 
ment, this  desire  for  adventure,  is  basic,  and 
will  be  evinced  by  each  generation  of  city  boys 
as  a  challenge  to  their  elders?  And  yet  those 
of  us  who  live  in  Chicago  are  obliged  to  confess 
that  last  year  there  were  arrested  and  brought 
into  court  fifteen  thousand  young  people  under 
the  age  of  twenty,  who  had  failed  to  keep  even 
the  common  law  of  the  land.  Most  of  these 
young  people  had  broken  the  law  in  their 
blundering  efforts  to  find  adventure  and  in 
response  to  the  old  impulse  for  self-expression. 
It  is  said  indeed  that  practically  the  whole 
machinery  of  the  grand  jury  and  of  the  crim- 
inal courts  is  maintained  and  operated  for  the 


70         YOUTH   AND   THE    CITY   STREETS 

benefit  of  youths  between  the  ages  of  thirteen 
and  twenty-five.  Men  up  to  ninety  years  of 
age,  it  is  true,  commit  crimes,  but  they  are  not 
characterized  by  the  recklessness,  the  bravado 
and  the  horror  which  have  stained  our  records 
in  Chicago.  An  adult  with  the  most  sordid 
experience  of  life  and  the  most  rudimentary 
notion  of  prudence,  could  not  possibly  have 
committed  them.  Only  a  utilization  of  that 
sudden  burst  of  energy  belonging  partly  to  the 
future  could  have  achieved  them,  only  a  cap- 
ture of  the  imagination  and  of  the  deepest  emo- 
tions of  youth  could  have  prevented  them! 

Possibly  these  fifteen  thousand  youths  were 
brought  to  grief  because  the  adult  population 
assumed  that  the  young  would  be  able  to  grasp 
only  that  which  is  presented  in  the  form  of 
sensation;  as  if  they  believed  that  youth  could 
thus  early  become  absorbed  in  a  hand  to  mouth 
existence,  and  so  entangled  in  materialism  that 
there  would  be  no  reaction  against  it.  It  is  as 
though  we  were  deaf  to  the  appeal  of  these 
young  creatures,  claiming  their  share  of  the  joy 
of  life,  flinging  out  into  the  dingy  city  their 
desires  and  aspirations  after  unknown  realities, 


THE    QUEST    FOE    ADVENTURE  71 

their  unutterable  longings  for  companionsliip 
and  pleasure.  Their  very  demand  for  excite- 
ment is  a  protest  against  the  dulness  of  life, 
to  which  we  ourselves  instinctively  respond. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  HOUSE  OF  DREAMS 


CHAPTER  lY 
THE  HOUSE  OF  DREAMS 

To  the  preoccupied  adult  who  is  prone  to  use 
the  city  street  as  a  mere  passageway  from  one 
hurried  duty  to  another,  nothing  is  more 
touching  than  his  encounter  with  a  group  of 
children  and  young  people  who  are  emerging 
from  a  theater  with  the  magic  of  the  play  still 
thick  upon  them.  They  look  up  and  down  the 
familiar  street  scarcely  recognizing  it  and 
quite  unable  to  determine  the  direction  of 
home.  From  a  tangle  of  "make  believe"  they 
gravely  scrutinize  the  real  world  which  they 
are  so  reluctant  to  reenter,  reminding  one  of 
the  absorbed  gaze  of  a  child  who  is  groping 
his  way  back  from  fairy-land  whither  the 
story  has  completely  transported  him. 

** Going  to  the  show"  for  thousands  of  young 
people  in  every  industrial  city  is  the  only  pos- 
sible road  to  the  realms  of  mystery  and  ro- 
mance;  the  theater  is  the   only  place   where 

75 


76         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

they  can  satisfy  that  craving  for  a  conception 
of  life  higher  than  that  which  the  actual  world 
offers  them.  In  a  very  real  sense  the  drama 
and  the  drama  alone  performs  for  them  the 
office  of  art  as  is  clearly  revealed  in  their  blun- 
dering demand  stated  in  many  forms  for  **a 
play  unlike  life."  The  theater  becomes  to 
them  a  *' veritable  house  of  dreams"  infinitely 
more  real  than  the  noisy  streets  and  the 
crowded  factories. 

This  first  simple  demand  upon  the  theater 
for  romance  is  closely  allied  to  one  more  com- 
plex which  might  be  described  as  a  search  for 
solace  and  distraction  in  those  moments  of  first 
awakening  from  the  glamour  of  a  youth's 
interpretation  of  life  to  the  sterner  realities 
which  are  thrust  upon  his  consciousness. 
These  perceptions  which  inevitably  ''close 
around"  and  imprison  the  spirit  of  youth  are 
perhaps  never  so  grim  as  in  the  case  of  the 
wage-earning  child.  We  can  all  recall  our 
own  moments  of  revolt  against  life's  actuali- 
ties, our  reluctance  to  admit  that  all  life  was 
to  be  as  unheroic  and  uneventful  as  that  which 
we  saw  about  us,  it  was  too  unbearable  that 


THE   HOUSE    OF   DREAMS  77 

''this  was  all  there  was"  and  we  tried  evfery 
possible  avenue  of  escape.  As  we  made  an 
effort  to  believe,  in  spite  of  what  we  saw,  that 
life  was  noble  and  harmonious,  as  we  stub- 
bornly clung  to  poesy  in  contradiction  to  the 
testimony  of  our  senses,  so  we  see  thousands 
of  young  people  thronging  the  theaters  bent  in 
their  turn  upon  the  same  quest.  The  drama 
provides  a  transition  between  the  romantic 
conceptions  which  they  vainly  struggle  to  keep 
intact  and  life's  cruelties  and  trivialities  which 
they  refuse  to  admit.  A  child  whose  imagina- 
tion has  been  cultivated  is  able  to  do  this  for 
himself  through  reading  and  reverie,  but  for 
the  overworked  city  youth  of  meager  educa- 
tion, perhaps  nothing  but  the  theater  is  able 
to  perform  this  important  office. 

The  theater  also  has  a  strange  power  to  fore- 
cast life  for  the  youth.  Each  boy  comes  from 
our  ancestral  past  not  *'in  entire  forgetful- 
ness,"  and  quite  as  he  unconsciously  uses 
ancient  war-cries  in  his  street  play,  so  he  longs 
to  reproduce  and  to  see  set  before  him  the 
valors  and  vengeances  of  a  society  embodying 
a  much  more  primitive  state  of  morality  than 


78         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

that  in  Tvhich  he  finds  himself.     ]\Ir.  Patten 
has  pointed  out  that  the  elemental  action  which 
the  stage  presents,   the  old  emotions  of  love 
and  jealousy,  of  revenge  and  daring  take  the 
thoughts  of  the  spectator  back  into  deep   and 
well  worn  channels  in  which  his  mind  runs  with 
a  sense  of  rest  afforded  by  nothing  else.     The 
cheap  drama  brings  cause  and  effect,  will  power 
and  action,  once  more  into  relation  and  gives 
a  man  the  thrilling  conviction  that  he  may  yet 
be  master  of  his  fate.     The  youth  of  course, 
quite   unconscious    of   this   psychology,   views 
the  deeds  of  the  hero  simply  as  a  forecast  of 
his  own  future  and  it  is  this  fascinating  view 
of   his   own    career   which    draws    the    boy   to 
*' shows"   of   all  sorts.     They  can  scarcely  be 
too   improbable    for   him,    portraying,    as    they 
do,  his  belief  in  his  own  prowess.     A  series  of 
slides  which  has  lately  been  very  popular  in  the 
five-cent    theaters    of    Chicago,    portrayed    five 
masked  men  breaking  into  a  humble  dwelling, 
killing  the  father  of  the  family  and  carrying 
away  the   family  treasure.     The   golden-haired 
son  of  the  house,  aged  seven,  vows  eternal  ven- 
geance on  the  spot,  and  follows  one  villain  after 


THE    HOUSE    OF   DREAMS  79 

another  to  his  doom.  The  execution  of  each  is 
shown  in  lurid  detail,  and  the  last  slide  of  the 
series  depicts  the  hero,  aged  ten,  kneeling 
upon  his  father's  grave  counting  on  the  fingers 
of  one  hand  the  number  of  men  that  he  has 
killed,  and  thanking  God  that  he  has  been 
permitted  to  be  an  instrument  of  vengeance. 

In  another  series  of  slides,  a  poor  woman 
is  wearily  bending  over  some  sewing,  a  baby 
is  crying  in  the  cradle,  and  two  little  boys  of 
nine  and  ten  are  asking  for  food.  In  despair 
the  mother  sends  them  out  into  the  street  to 
beg,  but  instead  they  steal  a  revolver  from  a 
pawn  shop  and  with  it  kill  a  Chinese  laundry- 
man,  robbing  him  of  $200.  They  rush  home 
with  the  treasure  which  is  found  by  the  mother 
in  the  baby 's  cradle,  whereupon  she  and  her  sons 
fall  upon  their  knees  and  send  up  a  prayer  of 
thankfulness  for  this  timely  and  heaven-sent 
assistance. 

Is  it  not  astounding  that  a  city  allows  thou- 
sands of  its  youth  to  fill  their  impressionable 
minds  with  these  absurdities  which  certainly 
will  become  the  foundation  for  their  working 


80        YOUTH   AND   THE    CITY   STREETS 

moral  codes  and  the  data  from  which  they  will 
judge  the  proprieties  of  life? 

It  is  as  if  a  child,  starved  at  home,  should 
be  forced  to  go  out  and  search  for  food,  select- 
ing, quite  naturally,  not  that  which  is  nourish- 
ing but  that  which  is  exciting  and  appealing 
to  his  outward  sense,  often  in  his  ignorance 
and  foolishness  blundering  into  substances 
which  are  filthy  and  poisonous. 

Out  of  my  twenty  years'  experience  at  Hull- 
House  I  can  recall  all  sorts  of  pilferings,  petty 
larcenies,  and  even  burglaries,  due  to  that 
never  ceasing  effort  on  the  part  of  boys  to 
procure  theater  tickets.  I  can  also  recall  in- 
direct efforts  towards  the  same  end  which  are 
most  pitiful.  I  remember  the  remorse  of  a 
young  girl  of  fifteen  who  was  brought  into  the 
Juvenile  Court  after  a  night  spent  weeping  in 
the  cellar  of  her  home  because  she  had  stolen 
a  mass  of  artificial  flowers  with  which  to  trim 
a  hat.  She  stated  that  she  had  taken  the 
flowers  because  she  was  afraid  of  losing  the 
attention  of  a  young  man  whom  she  had  heard 
say  that  **a  girl  has  to  be  dressy  if  she  expects 
to  be  seen."    This  young  man  was  the  only 


THE   HOUSE   OF   DREAMS  81 

one  who  had  ever  taken  her  to  the  theater  and 
if  he  failed  her,  she  was  sure  that  she  would 
never  go  again,  and  she  sobbed  out  incoherently, 
that  she  ^'couldn't  live  at  all  without  it.'*  ^  Ap- 
parently the  blankness  and  grayness  of  life  itself 
had  been  broken  for  her  only  by  the  portrayal 
of  a  different  world. 

One  boy  whom  I  had  known  from  babyhood 
began  to  take  money  from  his  mother  from 
the  thne  he  was  seven  years  old,  and  after  he 
was  ten  she  regularly  gave  him  money  for  the 
play  Saturday  evening.     However,  the  Saturday 
performance,  ^starting  him  off  like,"  he  always 
went  twice   again   on  Sunday,   procuring   the 
money  in  all  sorts  of  illicit  ways.    Practically 
all  of  his  earnings  after  he  was  fourteen  were 
spent  in  this  way  to  satisfy  the  insatiable  desire 
to  know  of  the  great  adventures  of  the  wide 
world  which  the  more  fortunate  boy  takes  out 
in  reading  Homer  and  Stevenson. 

In  talking  with  his  mother,  I  was  reminded 
of  my  experience  one  Sunday  afternoon  in 
Russia  when  the  employees  of  a  large  factory 
were  seated  in  an  open-air  theater,  watchmg 
with  breathless  interest  the  presentation  of 
6 


82         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

folk  stories.  I  was  told  that  troupes  of  actors 
went  from  one  manufacturing  establishment 
to  another  presenting  the  simple  elements  of 
history  and  literature  to  the  illiterate  employees. 
This  tendency  to  slake  the  thirst  for  adventure 
by  viewing  the  drama  is,  of  course,  but  a  blind 
and  primitive  effort  in  the  direction  of  culture, 
for  ''he  who  makes  himself  its  vessel  and  bearer 
thereby  acquires  a  freedom  from  the  blindness 
and  soul  poverty  of  daily  existence." 

It  is  partly  in  response  to  this  need  that  more 
sophisticated  young  people  often  go  to  the 
theater,  hoping  to  find  a  clue  to  life's  perplexi- 
ties. Many  times  the  bewildered  hero  reminds 
one  of  Emerson's  description  of  Margaret  Ful- 
ler, *'I  don't  know  where  I  am  going,  follow 
me";  nevertheless,  the  stage  is  dealing  with 
the  moral  themes  in  which  the  public  is  most 
interested. 

And  while  many  young  people  go  to  the  the- 
ater if  only  to  see  represented,  and  to  hear 
discussed,  the  themes  which  seem  to  them  so 
tragically  important,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
what  they  hear  there,  flimsy  and  poor  as  it 
often   is,    easily   becomes   their   actual   moral 


THE    HOUSE    OF    DREAMS  83 

guide.    In  moments  of  moral  crisis  they  turn  to 
the  sayings  of  the  hero  who  found  himself  in 
a  similar  plight.    The  sayings  may  not  be  pro- 
found, but  at  least  they  are  applicable  to  con- 
duct.    In  the  last  few  years  scores  of  plays 
have   been   put  upon   the   stage    whose   titles 
might  be  easily  translated  into  proper  headings 
for   sociological   lectures  or  sermons,   without 
including  the  plays  of  Ibsen,  Shaw  and  Haupt- 
mann,  which  deal  so  directly  with  moral  issues 
that  the  moralists  themselves  wince  under  their 
teachings  and  declare  them  brutal.     But  it  is 
this  very  brutality  which  the  over-refined  and 
complicated    city   dwellers  often   crave.     Moral 
teaching  has  become  so  intricate,  creeds  so  meta- 
phj^sical,  that  in  a  state  of  absolute  reaction  they 
demand    definite    instruction    for   daily    living. 
Their  whole-hearted  acceptance  of  the  teaching 
corroborates  the  statement  recently  made  by  an 
English  playwright  that  ''The  theater  is  literally 
making  the  minds  of  our  urban  populations  to- 
day.    It  is  a  huge  factory  of  sentiment,  of  char- 
acter, of  points  of  honor,  of  conceptions  of  con- 
duct, of  everj^hing  that  finally  determines  the 
destiny  of  a  nation.     The  theater  is  not  only  a 


84         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

place  of  amusement,  it  is  a  place  of  culture,  a 
place  where  people  learn  how  to  think,  act, 
and  feel."  Seldom,  however,  do  we  associate 
the  theater  with  our  plans  for  civic  righteous- 
ness, although  it  has  become  so  important  a 
factor  in  city  life. 

One  Sunday  evening  last  winter  an  investi- 
gation was  made  of  four  hundred  and  sixty  six 
theaters  in  the  city  of  Chicago,  and  it  was  dis- 
covered that  in  the  majority  of  them  the  lead- 
ing theme  was  revenge ;  the  lover  following  his 
rival;  the  outraged  husband  seeking  his  wife's 
paramour;  or  the  wiping  out  by  death  of  a  blot 
on  a  hitherto  unstained  honor.  It  was  esti- 
mated that  one  sixth  of  the  entire  population 
of  the  city  had  attended  the  theaters  on  that 
day.  At  that  same  moment  the  churches 
throughout  the  city  were  preaching  the  gospel 
of  good  will.  Is  not  this  a  striking  commen- 
tary upon  the  contradictory  influences  to  which 
the  city  youth  is  constantly  subjected? 

This  discrepancy  between  the  church  and 
the  stage  is  at  times  apparently  recognized  by 
the  five-cent  theater  itself,  and  a  blundering  at- 
tempt is  made  to  suffuse  the  songs  and  moving 


THE    HOUSE   OF   DEEAMS  35 

pictures  with  piety.  Nothing  could  more  ab- 
surdly demonstrate  this  attempt  than  a  song, 
illustrated  by  pictures,  describing  the  adven- 
tures of  a  young  man  who  follows  a  pretty  girl 
through  street  after  street  in  the  hope  of 
** snatching  a  kiss  from  her  ruby  lips.'*  The 
young  man  is  overjoyed  when  a  sudden  \vind 
storm  drives  the  girl  to  shelter  under  an  arch- 
way, and  he  is  about  to  succeed  in  his  attempt 
when  the  good  Lord,  *'ever  watchful  over  in- 
nocence," makes  the  same  wind  **blow  a  cloud 
of  dust  into  the  eyes  of  the  rubberneck,*'  and 
**his  foul  purpose  is  foiled."  This  attempt  at 
piety  is  also  shown  in  a  series  of  films  depicting 
Bible  stories  and  the  Passion  Play  at  Oberam- 
mergau,  forecasting  the  time  when  the  moving 
film  will  be  viewed  as  a  mere  mechanical  de- 
vice for  the  use  of  the  church,  the  school  and 
the  librar3%  as  well  as  for  the  theater. 

At  present,  however,  most  improbable  tales 
hold  the  attention  of  the  youth  of  the  city 
night  after  night,  and  feed  his  starved  imagi- 
nation as  nothing  else  succeeds  in  doing.  In 
addition  to  these  fascinations,  the  five-cent 
theater  is  also  fast  becoming  the  general  social 


QQ         YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

center  and  club  house  in  many  crowded  neigh- 
borhoods. It  is  easy  of  access  from  the  street, 
the  entire  family  of  parents  and  children  can 
attend  for  a  comparatively  small  sum  of  money, 
and  the  performance  lasts  for  at  least  an  hour ; 
and,  in  some  of  the  humbler  theaters,  the  spec- 
tators are  not  disturbed  for  a  second  hour. 

The  room  which  contains  the  mimic  stage  is 
small  and  cozy,  and  less  formal  than  the  regu- 
lar theater,  and  there  is  much  more  gossip  and 
social  life  as  if  the  foyer  and  pit  were  mingled. 
The  very  darkness  of  the  room,  necessary  for 
an  exhibition  of  the  films,  is  an  added  attrac- 
tion to  many  young  people,  for  whom  the  space 
is  filled  with  the  glamour  of  love  making. 

Hundreds  of  young  people  attend  these  five- 
cent  theaters  every  evening  in  the  week,  in- 
cluding Sunday,  and  what  is  seen  and  heard 
there  becomes  the  sole  topic  of  conversation, 
forming  the  ground  pattern  of  their  social  life. 
That  mutual  understanding  which  in  another 
social  circle  is  provided  by  books,  travel  and  all 
the  arts,  is  here  compressed  into  the  topics  sug- 
gested by  the  play. 

The    young    people    attend    the    five-cent 


THE    HOUSE    OF   DEEAMS  87 

theaters  in  groups,  with  something  of  the 
"gang'*  instinct,  boasting  of  the  films  and 
stunts  in  "our  theater."  They  find  a  certain 
advantage  in  attending  one  theater  regularly, 
for  the  hahitues  are  often  invited  to  come  upon 
the  stage  on  *' amateur  nights,"  which  occur 
at  least  once  a  week  in  all  the  theaters.  This 
is,  of  course,  a  most  exciting  experience.  If 
the  ''stunt"  does  not  meet  with  the  approval 
of  the  audience,  the  performer  is  greeted  with 
jeers  and  a  long  hook  pulls  him  off  the  stage ; 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  succeeds  in  pleasing 
the  audience,  he  may  be  paid  for  his  perfor- 
mance and  later  register  with  a  booking  agency, 
the  address  of  which  is  supplied  by  the  obli- 
ging manager,  and  thus  he  fancies  that  a 
lucrative  and  exciting  career  is  opening  before 
him.  Almost  every  night  at  six  o'clock  a  long 
line  of  children  may  be  seen  waiting  at  the 
entrance  of  these  booking  agencies,  of  which 
there  are  fifteen  that  are  well  known  in 
Chicago. 

Thus,  the  only  art  which  is  constantly 
placed  before  the  eyes  of  ''the  temperamental 
youth"  is  a  debased  form  of  dramatic  art,  and 


g8        YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

a  vulgar  type  of  music,  for  the  success  of  a 
song  in  these  theaters  depends  not  so  much 
upon  its  musical  rendition  as  upon  the  vulgarity 
of  its  appeal.  In  a  song  which  held  the  stage 
of  a  cheap  theater  in  Chicago  for  weeks,  the 
young  singer  was  helped  out  by  a  bit  of  mirror 
from  which  she  threw  a  flash  of  light  into 
the  faces  of  successive  boys  whom  she  selected 
from  the  audience  as  she  sang  the  refrain,  "You 
are  my  Affinity/'  Many  popular  songs  relate 
the  vulgar  experiences  of  a  city  man  wander- 
ing from  amusement  park  to  bathing  beach  in 
search  of  flirtations.  It  may  be  that  these 
* '  stunts ' '  and  recitals  of  city  adventure  contain 
the  nucleus  of  coming  poesy  and  romance,  as 
the  songs  and  recitals  of  the  early  minstrels 
sprang  directly  from  the  life  of  the  people,  but 
all  the  more  does  the  effort  need  help  and  di- 
rection, both  in  the  development  of  its  tech- 
nique and  the  material  of  its  themes. 

The  few  attempts  which  have  been  made  in 
this  direction  are  astonishingly  rewarding  to 
those  who  regard  the  power  of  self-expression 
as  one  of  the  most  precious  boons  of  education. 
The  Children's  Theater  in  New  York  is  the 


THE    HOUSE   OF   DREA3IS  89 

most  successful  example,  but  every  settlement 
in  which  dramatics  have  been  systematically 
fostered  can  also  testify  to  a  surprisingly 
quick  response  to  this  form  of  art  on  the  part 
of  young  people.  The  Hull-House  Theater  is 
constantly  besieged  by  children  clamoring  to 
*'take  part'*  in  the  plays  of  Schiller,  Shake- 
speare, and  Moliere,  although  they  know  it 
means  weeks  of  rehearsal  and  the  complete 
memorizing  of  ''stiff"  lines.  The  audiences  sit 
enthralled  by  the  final  rendition  and  other 
children  whose  tastes  have  supposedly  been 
debased  by  constant  vaudeville,  are  patheti- 
cally eager  to  come  again  and  again.  Even 
when  still  more  is  required  from  the  young 
actors,  research  into  the  special  historic  period, 
copying  costumes  from  old  plates,  hours  of 
labor  that  the  ''th"  may  be  restored  to  its 
proper  place  in  English  speech,  their  enthu- 
siasm is  unquenched.  But  quite  aside  from  its 
educational  possibilities  one  never  ceases  to 
marvel  at  the  power  of  even  a  mimic  stage  to 
afford  to  the  young  a  magic  space  in  which 
life  may  be  lived  in  efflorescence,  where  man- 
ners   may    be    courtly    and    elaborate    without 


90         YOUTH    AXD    THE    CITY    STREETS 

exciting  ridicule,  where  the  sequence  of  events 
is  impressive  and  comprehensible.  Order  and 
beauty  of  life  is  what  the  adolescent  youth 
craves  above  all  else  as  the  younger  child  inde- 
fatigably  demands  his  story.  "Is  this  where 
the  most  beautiful  princess  in  the  world  lives?'* 
asks  a  little  girl  peering  into  the  door  of  the 
Hull-House  Theater,  or  ''Does  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land always  stay  here  ? "  It  is  much  easier  for 
her  to  put  her  feeling  into  words  than  it  is  for 
the  youth  who  has  enehantingly  rendered  the 
gentle  poetrj^  of  Ben  Jonson's  "Sad  Shepherd," 
or  for  him  who  has  walked  the  boards  as 
Southey's  Wat  Tyler.  His  association,  however, 
is  quite  as  clinging  and  magical  as  is  the  child's 
although  he  can  only  say,  "Gee,  I  wish  I  could 
always  feel  the  way  I  did  that  night.  Something 
would  be  doing  then."  Nothing  of  the  artist's 
pleasure,  nor  of  the  revelation  of  that  larger 
world  which  surrounds  and  completes  our  own, 
is  lost  to  him  because  a  careful  technique  has 
been  exacted,— on  the  contrary  this  has  only 
dignified  and  enhanced  it.  It  would  also  be 
easy  to  illustrate  youth's  eagerness  for  artistic 
expression  from  the  recitals  given  by  the  pupils 


THE    HOUSE    OF   DREAMS  91 

of  the  New  York  Music  School  Settlement,  or 
by  those  of  the  Hull-House  Music  School. 
These  attempts  also  combine  social  life  with 
the  training  of  the  artistic  sense  and  in  this 
approximate  the  fascinations  of  the  five-cent 
theater. 

This  spring  a  group  of  young  girls  accus- 
tomed to  the  life  of  a  five-cent  theater,  reluct- 
antly refused  an  invitation  to  go  to  the  country 
for  a  day's  outing  because  the  return  on  a  late 
train  would  compel  them  to  miss  one  evening's 
performance.  They  found  it  impossible  to  tear 
themselves  away  not  only  from  the  excitements 
of  the  theater  itself  but  from  the  gaiety  of  the 
crowd  of  young  men  and  girls  invariably 
gathered  outside  discussing  the  sensational 
posters. 

A  steady  English  shopkeeper  lately  com- 
plained that  unless  he  provided  his  four 
daughters  with  the  money  for  the  five-cent 
theaters  every  evening  they  would  steal  it  from 
his  till,  and  he  feared  that  they  might  be  driven 
to  procure  it  in  even  more  illicit  ways.  Because 
his  entire  family  life  had  been  thus  disrupted 
he   gloomily  asserted  that   **this   cheap   show 


92         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

had  ruined  his  'ome  and  was  the  curse  of  Amer- 
ica." This  father  was  able  to  formulate  the 
anxiety  of  many  immigrant  parents  who  are 
absolutely  bewildered  by  the  keen  absorption 
of  their  children  in  the  cheap  theater.  This 
anxiety  is  not,  indeed,  without  foundation. 
An  eminent  alienist  of  Chicago  states  that  he 
has  had  a  number  of  patients  among  neurotic 
children  whose  emotional  natures  have  been  so 
over-wrought  by  the  crude  appeal  to  which 
they  had  been  so  constantly  subjected  in  the 
theaters,  that  they  have  become  victims  of 
hallucination  and  mental  disorder.  The  state- 
ment of  this  physician  may  be  the  first  note  of 
alarm  which  will  awaken  the  city  to  its  duty 
in  regard  to  the  theater,  so  that  it  shall  at  least 
be  made  safe  and  sane  for  the  city  child  whose 
senses  are  already  so  abnormally  developed. 

This  testimony  of  a  physician  that  the  con- 
ditions are  actually  pathological,  may  at  last 
induce  us  to  bestir  ourselves  in  regard  to  pro- 
curing a  more  wholesome  form  of  public 
recreation.  Many  efforts  in  social  amelioration 
have  been  undertaken  only  after  such  ex- 
posures; in  the  meantime,  while  the  occasional 


THE    HOUSE   OF   DEEAMS  93 

child  is  driven  distraught,  a  hundred  children 
permanently  injure  their  eyes  watching  the  mov- 
ing films,  and  hundreds  more  seriously  model 
their  conduct  upon  the  standards  set  before 
them  on  this  mimic  stage. 

Three  boys,  aged  nine,  eleven  and  thirteen 
years,  who  had  recently  seen  depicted  the  ad- 
ventures of  frontier  life  including  the  holding 
up  of  a  stage  coach  and  the  lassoing  of  the  driver, 
spent  weeks  planning  to  lasso,  murder,  and  rob 
a  neighborhood  milkman,  who  started  on  his 
route  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  They 
made  their  headquarters  in  a  barn  and  saved 
enough  money  to  buy  a  revolver,  adopting  as 
their  watchword  the  phrase  **Dead  Men  Tell  no 
Tales."  One  spring  morning  the  conspirators, 
with  their  faces  covered  with  black  cloth,  lay  **in 
ambush"  for  the  milkman.  Fortunately  for 
him,  as  the  lariat  was  thrown  the  horse  shied, 
and,  although  the  shot  was  appropriately  fired, 
the  milkman's  life  was  saved.  Such  a  direct 
influence  of  the  theater  is  by  no  means  rare, 
even  among  older  boys.  Thirteen  young  lads 
were  brought  into  the  Municipal  Court  in 
Chicago  during  the  first  week  that  ''Raffles, 


94         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

the  Amateur  Cracksman"  was  upon  the  stage, 
each  one  with  an  outfit  of  burglar's  tools  in 
his  possession,  and  each  one  shamefacedly  ad- 
mitting that  the  gentlemanly  burglar  in  the 
play  had  suggested  to  him  a  career  of  similar 
adventure. 

In  so  far  as  the  illusions  of  the  theater  suc- 
ceed in  giving  youth  the  rest  and  recreation 
which  comes  from  following  a  more  primitive 
code  of  morality,  it  has  a  close  relation  to  the 
function  performed  by  public  games.  It  is, 
of  course,  less  valuable  because  the  sense  of 
participation  is  largely  confined  to  the  emo- 
tions and  the  imagination,  and  does  not  involve 
the  entire  nature. 

We  might  illustrate  by  the  *'Wild  West 
Show"  in  which  the  onlooking  boy  imagines 
himself  an  active  participant.  The  scouts,  the 
Indians,  the  bucking  ponies,  are  his  real  in- 
timate companions  and  occupy  his  entire  mind. 
In  contrast  with  this  we  have  the  omnipresent 
game  of  tag  which  is,  doubtless,  also  founded 
upon  the  chase.  It  gives  the  boy  exercise  and 
momentary  echoes  of  the  old  excitement,  but 


THE    HOUSE   OF   DREAMS  95 

it  is  barren  of  suggestion  and  quickly  degen- 
erates into  horse-play. 

Well  considered  public  games  easily  carried 
out  in  a  park  or  athletic  field,  might  both  fill 
the  mind  with  the  imaginative  material  con- 
stantly supplied  by  the  theater,  and  also  afford 
the  activity  which  the  cramped  muscles  of  the 
town  dweller  so  sorely  need.  Even  the  un- 
questioned ability  which  the  theater  possesses 
to  bring  men  together  into  a  common  mood 
and  to  afford  them  a  mutual  topic  of  conversa- 
tion, is  better  accomplished  with  the  one  na- 
tional game  which  we  already  possess,  and 
might  be  infinitely  extended  through  the  or- 
ganization of  other  public  games. 

The  theater  even  now  by  no  means  competes 
with  the  baseball  league  games  which  are  at- 
tended by  thousands  of  men  and  boys  who,  dur- 
ing the  entire  summer,  discuss  the  respective 
standing  of  each  nine  and  the  relative  merits  of 
every  player.  During  the  noon  hour  all  the 
employees  of  a  city  factory  gather  in  the  nearest 
vacant  lot  to  cheer  their  own  home  team  in  its 
practice  for  the  next  game  with  the  nine  of  a 
neighboring   manufacturing   establishment   and 


96         YOUTH   AND    THE   CITY   STEEETS' 

on  a  Saturday  afternoon  the  entire  male  popula- 
tion of  the  city  betakes  itself  to  the  baseball 
field ;  the  ordinary  means  of  transportation  are 
supplemented  by  gay  stage-coaches  and  huge 
automobiles,  noisy  with  blowing  horns  and 
decked  with  gay  pennants.  The  enormous 
crowd  of  cheering  men  and  boys  are  talkative, 
good-natured,  full  of  the  holiday  spirit,  and  ab- 
solutely released  from  the  grind  of  life.  They 
are  lifted  out  of  their  individual  affairs  and 
so  fused  together  that  a  man  cannot  tell 
whether  it  is  his  own  shout  or  another's  that 
fills  his  ears ;  whether  it  is  his  own  coat  or  an- 
other's  that  he  is  wildly  waving  to  celebrate  a 
victory.  He  does  not  call  the  stranger  who 
sits  next  to  him  his  ''brother"  but  he  uncon- 
sciously embraces  him  in  an  overwhelming  out- 
burst of  kindly  feeling  when  the  favorite  player 
makes  a  home  run.  Does  not  this  contain  a 
suggestion  of  the  undoubted  power  of  public 
recreation  to  bring  together  all  classes  of  a 
community  in  the  modern  city  unhappily  so  full 
of  devices  for  keeping  men  apart  ? 

Already  some  American  cities  are  making  a 
beginning  toward  more  adequate  public  recre- 


THE    HOUSE   OF   DREAMS  97 

ation.  Boston  has  its  municipal  gymnasiums, 
cricket  fields,  and  golf  grounds.  Chicago  has 
seventeen  parks  with  playing  fields,  gymna- 
siums and  baths,  which  at  present  enroll  thou- 
sands of  young  people.  These  same  parks  are 
provided  with  beautiful  halls  which  are  used 
for  many  purposes,  rent  free,  and  are  given 
over  to  any  group  of  young  people  who  wish 
to  conduct  dancing  parties  subject  to  city 
supervision  and  chaperonage.  Many  social 
clubs  have  deserted  neighboring  saloon  halls 
for  these  municipal  drawing  rooms  beautifully 
decorated  with  growing  plants  supplied  by 
the  park  greenhouses,  and  flooded  with  electric 
lights  supplied  by  the  park  power  house.  In 
the  saloon  halls  the  young  people  were  obliged 
to  **pass  money  freely  over  the  bar,^'  and  in 
order  to  make  the  most  of  the  occasion  they 
usually  stayed  until  morning.  At  such  times 
the  economic  necessity  itself  would  override 
the  counsels  of  the  more  temperate,  and  the 
thrifty  door  keeper  would  not  insist  upon  in- 
vitations but  would  take  in  any  one  who  had  the 
** price  of  a  ticket.*'  The  free  rent  in  the  park 
hall,  the  good  food  in  the  park  restaurant,  sup- 
7 


98         YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

plied  at  cost,  have  made  three  parties  closing  at 
eleven  o'clock  no  more  expensive  than  one  party 
breaking  up  at  daylight,  too  often  in  disorder. 

Is  not  this  an  argument  that  the  drinking, 
the  late  hours,  the  lack  of  decorum,  are  directly 
traceable  to  the  commercial  enterprise  which 
ministers  to  pleasure  in  order  to  drag  it  into  ex- 
cess because  excess  is  more  profitable?  To  thus 
commercialize  pleasure  is  as  monstrous  as  it  is 
to  commercialize  art.  It  is  intolerable  that  the 
city  does  not  take  over  this  function  of  making 
provision  for  pleasure,  as  wise  communities  in 
Sweden  and  South  Carolina  have  taken  the 
sale  of  alcohol  out  of  the  hands  of  enterprising 
publicans. 

We  are  only  beginning  to  understand  what 
might  be  done  through  the  festival,  the  street 
procession,  the  band  of  marching  musicians, 
orchestral  music  in  public  squares  or  parks, 
with  the  magic  power  they  all  possess  to  formu- 
late the  sense  of  companionship  and  solidarity. 
The  experiments  which  are  being  made  in  pub- 
lic schools  to  celebrate  the  national  holidays, 
the  changing  seasons,  the  birthdays  of  heroes, 
the  planting  of  trees,  are  slowly   developing 


THE    HOUSE    OF   DREAMS  99 

little  ceremonials  which  may  in  time  work  out 
into  pageants  of  grenuine  beauty  and  signifi- 
cance. No  other  nation  has  so  unparalleled 
an  opportunity  to  do  this  through  its  schools 
as  we  have,  for  no  other  nation  has  so  wide- 
spreading  a  school  system,  while  the  enthusi- 
asm of  children  and  their  natural  ability  to 
express  their  emotions  through  symbols,  gives 
the  securest  possible  foundation  to  this  growing 
effort. 

The  city  schools  of  New  York  have  effected 
the  organization  of  high  school  girls  into  groups 
for  folk  dancing.  These  old  forms  of  dancing 
which  have  been  worked  out  in  many  lands  and 
through  long  experiences,  safeguard  unwary 
and  dangerous  expression  and  yet  afford  a 
vehicle  through  which  the  gaiety  of  youth  may 
flow.  Their  forms  are  indeed  those  which  lie 
at  the  basis  of  all  good  breeding,  forms  which 
at  once  express  and  restrain,  urge  forward  and 
set  limits. 

One  may  also  see  another  center  of  growth 
for  public  recreation  and  the  beginning  of  a 
pageantry  for  the  people  in  the  many  small 
parks  and  athletic  fields  which  almost  every 


100       YOUTH    AXD    THE    CITY    STREETS 

American  city  is  hastening  to  provide  for  its 
young.  These  small  parks  have  innumerable 
athletic  teams,  each  with  its  distinctive  uni- 
form, with  track  meets  and  match  games  ar- 
ranged with  the  teams  from  other  parks  and 
from  the  public  schools;  choruses  of  trade 
unionists  or  of  patriotic  societies  fill  the  park 
halls  with  eager  listeners.  Labor  Day  pro- 
cessions are  yearly  becoming  more  carefully 
planned  and  more  picturesque  in  character, 
as  the  desire  to  make  an  overwhelming  im- 
pression with  mere  size  gives  way  to  a  growing 
ambition  to  set  forth  the  significance  of  the 
craft  and  the  skill  of  the  workman.  At  mo- 
ments they  almost  rival  the  dignified  showing 
of  the  processions  of  the  German  Turn  Vereins 
which  are  also  often  seen  in  our  city  streets. 

The  many  foreign  colonies  which  are  found  in 
all  American  cities  afford  an  enormous  reserve 
of  material  for  public  recreation  and  street 
festival.  They  not  only  celebrate  the  feasts 
and  holidays  of  the  fatherland,  but  have  each 
their  own  public  expression  for  their  mutual 
benefit  societies  and  for  the  observance  of 
American   anniversaries.    From   the  gay   cele- 


THE    HOUSE    OF    DREAMS  IQl 

bration  of  the  Scandinavians  when  war  was 
averted  and  two  neighboring  nations  were 
united,  to  the  equally  gay  celebration  of  the 
centenary  of  Garibaldi's  birth;  from  the  Chin- 
ese dragon  cleverly  trailing  its  way  through 
the  streets,  to  the  Greek  banners  flung  out  in 
honor  of  immortal  heroes,  there  is  an  infinite 
variety  of  suggestions  and  possibilities  for 
public  recreation  and  for  the  corporate  expres- 
sion of  stirring  emotions.  After  all,  what  is 
the  function  of  art  but  to  preserve  in  perma- 
nent and  beautiful  form  those  emotions  and 
solaces  which  cheer  life  and  make  it  kindlier, 
more  heroic  and  easier  to  comprehend;  which 
lift  the  mind  of  the  worker  from  the  harsh- 
ness and  loneliness  of  his  task,  and,  by  con- 
necting him  with  what  has  gone  before,  free 
him  from  a  sense  of  isolation  and  hardship? 
Were  American  cities  really  eager  for  muni- 
cipal art,  they  would  cherish  as  genuine  begin- 
nings the  tarentella  danced  so  interminably  at 
Italian  weddings;  the  primitive  Greek  pipe 
played  throughout  the  long  summer  nights; 
the  Bohemian  theaters  crowded  with  eager 
Slavophiles;   the  Hungarian  musicians   stroll- 


102       YOUTH    AXD    THE    CITY    STREETS 

ing  from  street  to  street ;  the  fervid  oratory  of 
the  young  Russian  preaching  social  righteous- 
ness in  the  open  square. 

Many  Chicago  citizens  who  attended  the  first 
annual  meeting  of  the  National  Playground 
Association  of  America,  will  never  forget  the 
long  summer  day  in  the  large  playing  field 
filled  during  the  morning  with  hundreds  of 
little  children  romping  through  the  kinder- 
garten games,  in  the  afternoon  with  the  young 
men  and  girls  contending  in  athletic  sports; 
and  the  evening  light  made  gay  by  the  bright 
colored  garments  of  Italians,  Lithuanians,  Nor- 
wegians, and  a  dozen  other  nationalities,  re- 
producing their  old  dances  and  festivals  for  the 
pleasure  of  the  more  stolid  Americans.  Was 
this  a  forecast  of  what  we  may  yet  see  accom- 
plished through  a  dozen  agencies  promoting 
public  recreation  which  are  springing  up  in 
every  city  of  America,  as  they  already  are 
found  in  the  large  towns  of  Scotland  and 
England  ? 

Let  us  cherish  these  experiments  as  the  most 
precious  beginnings  of  an  attempt  to  supply  the 
recreational  needs  of  our  industrial  cities.     To 


THE    HOUSE    OF   DEEAMS  103 

fail  to  provide  for  the  recreation  of  youth, 
is  not  only  to  deprive  all  of  them  of  their 
natural  form  of  expression,  but  is  certain  to  sub- 
ject some  of  them  to  the  overwhelming  tempta- 
tion of  illicit  and  soul-destroying  pleasures. 
To  insist  that  young  people  shall  forecast  their 
rose-colored  future  only  in  a  house  of  dreams, 
is  to  deprive  the  real  world  of  that  warmth 
and  reassurance  which  it  so  sorely  needs  and  to 
which  it  is  justly  entitled ;  furthermore,  we  are 
left  outside  with  a  sense  of  dreariness,  in  com- 
pany with  that  shadow  which  already  lurks  only 
around  the  corner  for  most  of  us— a  skepticism 
of  life's  value. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    SPIRIT   OF   YOUTH  AND 
INDUSTRY 


CHAPTER   V 
THE  SPIRIT  OF  YOUTH  AND  INDUSTRY 

As  it  is  possible  to  establish  a  connection 
between  the  lack  of  public  recreation  and  the 
vicious  excitements  and  trivial  amusements 
which  become  their  substitutes,  so  it  may  be 
illuminating  to  trace  the  connection  between 
the  monotony  and  dullness  of  factory  work  and 
the  petty  immoralities  which  are  often  the 
youth's  protest  against  them. 

There  are  many  city  neighborhoods  in  which 
practically  every  young  person  who  has  at- 
tained the  age  of  fourteen  years  enters  a  factory. 
When  the  work  itself  offers  nothing  of  interest, 
and  when  no  public  provision  is  made  for  recre- 
ation, the  situation  becomes  almost  insupport- 
able to  the  youth  whose  ancestors  have  been 
rough-working    and    hard-playing   peasants. 

In  such  neighborhoods  the  joy  of  youth  is 
well  nigh  extinguished ;  and  in  that  long  pro- 
cession of  factory  workers,  each  morning  and 

107 


108-       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

evening,  the  young  walk  almost  as  wearily  and 
listlessly  as  the  old.  Young  people  working  in 
modern  factories  situated  in  cities  still  domi- 
nated by  the  ideals  of  Puritanism  face  a  com- 
bination which  tends  almost  irresistably  to 
overwhelm  the  spirit  of  youth.  When  the 
Puritan  repression  of  pleasure  was  in  the 
ascendant  in  America  the  people  it  dealt  with 
lived  on  farms  and  villages  where,  although 
youthful  pleasures  might  be  frowned  upon  and 
crushed  out,  the  young  people  still  had  a 
chance  to  find  self-expression  in  their  work. 
Plowing  the  field  and  spinning  the  flax  could  be 
carried  on  with  a  certain  joyousness  and  vigor 
which  the  organization  of  modern  industry  too 
often  precludes.  Present  industry  based  upon 
the  inventions  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
little  connection  with  the  old  patterns  in  which 
men  have  worked  for  generations.  The  modern 
factory  calls  for  an  expenditure  of  nervous 
energy  almost  more  than  it  demands  muscular 
effort,  or  at  least  machinery  so  far  performs 
the  work  of  the  massive  muscles,  that  greater 
stress  is  laid  upon  fine  and  exact  movements 
necessarily    involving    nervous    strain.      But 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      109 

these  movements  are  exactly  of  the  type  to 
which  the  muscles  of  a  growing  boy  least  read- 
ily respond,  quite  as  the  admonition  to  be 
accurate  and  faithful  is  that  which  appeals  the 
least  to  his  big  primitive  emotions.  The  de- 
mands made  upon  his  eyes  are  complicated 
and  trivial,  the  use  of  his  muscles  is  fussy  and 
monotonous,  the  relation  between  cause  and 
effect  is  remote  and  obscure.  Apparently  nc 
one  is  concerned  as  to  what  may  be  done  to 
aid  him  in  this  process  and  to  relieve  it  of  its 
dullness  and  difficulty,  to  mitigate  its  strain 
and  harshness. 

Perhaps  never  before  have  young  people 
been  expected  to  work  from  motives  so  detached 
from  direct  emotional  incentive.  Never  has  the 
age  of  marriage  been  so  long  delayed ;  never 
has  the  work  of  youth  been  so  separated  from 
the  family  life  and  the  public  opinion  of  the 
community.  Education  alone  can  repair  these 
losses.  It  alone  has  the  power  of  organizing  a 
child's  activities  with  some  reference  to  the 
life  he  wull  later  lead  and  of  giving  him  a 
clue  as  to  what  to  select  and  what  to  eliminate 
when  he  comes  into  contact  with  contemporary 


110       YOUTH    A^^D    THE    CITY    STREETS 

social  and  industrial  conditions.  And  until 
educators  take  hold  of  the  situation,  the  rest  of 
the  community  is  powerless. 

In  vast  regions  of  the  city  which  are  com- 
pletely dominated  by  the  factory,  it  is  as  if  the 
development  of  industry  had  outrun  all  the 
educational  and   social   arrangements. 

The  revolt  of  youth  against  uniformity  and 
the  necessity  of  following  careful  directions 
laid  down  by  some  one  else,  many  times  results 
in  such  nervous  irritability  that  the  youth,  in 
spite  of  all  sorts  of  prudential  reasons,  *  throws 
up  his  job,"  if  only  to  get  outside  the  factory 
walls  into  the  freer  street,  just  as  the  narrow- 
ness of  the  school  indosure  induces  many  a 
boy  to  jump  the  fence. 

When  the  boy  is  on  the  street,  however,  and 
is  ''standing  around  on  the  corner"  with  the 
gang  to  which  he  mysteriously  attaches  him- 
self, he  finds  the  difficulties  of  direct  untram- 
meled  action  almost  as  great  there  as  they  were 
in  the  factory,  but  for  an  entirely  different  set 
of  reasons.  The  necessity  so  strongly  felt  in 
the  factory  for  an  outlet  to  his  sudden  and 
furious   bursts   of   energy,   his   overmastering 


SPIRIT    OF   YOUTH    AND   INDUSTRY     m 

desire  to  prove  that  he  could  do  things  ''with- 
out being  bossed  all  the  time,"  finds  little  chance 
for  expression,  for  he  discovers  that  in  what- 
ever really  active  pursuit  he  tries  to  engage, 
he  is  promptly  suppressed  by  the  police.  After 
several  futile   attempts  at   self-expression,  he 
returns  to  his  street  corner  subdued  and  so  far 
discouraged  that  when  he  has  the  next  impulse 
to  vigorous  action  he  concludes  that  it  is  of 
no  use,  and  sullenly  settles  back  into  inactiv- 
ity.    He  thus  learns  to  persuade  himself  that 
it  is  better  to  do  nothing,  or,  as  the  psycholo- 
gist would  say,  ''to  inhibit  his  motor  impulses." 
When  the  same  boy,  as  an  adult  workman, 
finds  himself  confronted  with  an  unusual  or  an 
untoward  condition  in  his  work,  he  will  fall 
back  into  this  habit  of  inhibition,  of  making 
no   effort  toward   independent   action.     When 
"slack  times"  come,  he  will  be  the  workman  of 
least  value,  and  the  first  to  be  dismissed,  calmly 
accepting  his  position  in  the  ranks  of  the  un- 
employed because  it  will  not  be  so  unlike  the 
many  hours  of  idleness  and  vacuity  to  which 
he  was  accustomed  as  a  boy.    No  help  having 
been  extended  to  him  in  the  moment  of  his  first 


112       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

irritable  revolt  against  industry,  his  whole  life 
has  been  given  a  twist  toward  idleness  and 
futility.  He  has  not  had  the  chance  of  recovery 
which  the  school  system  gives  a  like  rebellious 
bo3^  in  a  truant  school. 

The  unjustifiable  lack  of  educational  super- 
vision during  the  first  years  of  factory  work 
makes  it  quite  impossible  for  the  modern  edu- 
cator to   offer   any  real   assistance   to   young 
people  during  that  trying  transitional  period 
between  school  and  industry.    The  young  peo- 
ple themselves  who  fail  to  conform  can  do  little 
but  rebel  against  the  entire  situation,  and  the 
expressions  of  revolt  roughly  divide  themselves 
into  three  classes.     The  first,  resulting  in  idle- 
ness, may  be  illustrated  from  many  a  sad  story 
of  a  boy  or  a  girl  who  has  spent  in  the  first  spurt 
of  premature   and  uninteresting  work,   all  the 
energy  which  should  have  carried  them  through 
years  of  steady  endeavor. 

I  recall  a  boy  who  had  worked  steadily  for 
two  years  as  a  helper  in  a  smelting  establish- 
ment, and  had  conscientiously  brought  home 
all  his  wages,  one  night  suddenly  announcing 
to  his  family  that  he  ''was  too  tired  and  too 


SPIRIT   OF   YOUTH   AND   INDUSTRY     113 

hot  to  go  on."     As  no  amount  of  persuasion 
could  make  him  alter  his  decision,  the  family 
finally  threatened  to  bring  him  into  the  Juve- 
nile Court  on  a  charge  of  incorrigibility,  where- 
upon the  boy  disappeared  and  such  efforts  as 
the  family  have  been  able  to  make  in  the  two 
years  since,  have  failed  to  find  him.    They  are 
convinced  that  *^he  is  trying  a  spell  of  tramp- 
ing" and  wish  that  they  ''had  let  him  have  a 
vacation  the  first  summer  when  he  wanted  it  so 
bad."     The  boy  may  find  in  the  rough  out- 
door life  the  healing  which  a  wise  physician 
would  recommend  for  nervous  exhaustion,  al- 
though the  tramp  experiment  is  a  perilous  one. 
This  revolt  against  factory  monotony  is  some- 
times closely  allied  to  that  ''moral  fatigue" 
which    results    from    assuming    responsibility 
prematurely.    I  recall  the  experience  of  a  Scotch 
girl   of   eighteen  who,  with  her  older  sister, 
worked   in   a   candy  factory,   their   combined 
earnings  supporting  a  paralytic  father.     The 
older  girl  met  with  an  accident  involving  the 
loss  of  both  eyes,  and  the  financial  support  of 
the  whole  family  devolved  upon  the  younger 
girl,  who  worked  hard  and  conscientiously  for 


114       YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STREETS 

three  years,  supplementing  her  insufficient  fac- 
tory wages  by  evening  work  at  glove  making. 
In  the  midst  of  this  devotion  and  monotonous 
existence  she  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  girl 
who  was  a  chorus  singer  in  a  cheap  theater  and 
the  contrast  between  her  monotonous  drudgery 
and  the  glitter  of  the  stage  broke  down  her 
allegiance    to    her    helpless    family.     She    left 
the  city,  absolutely  abandoning  the  kindred  to 
whom  she  had  been  so  long  devoted,  and  an- 
nounced that   if   they  all   starved   she   would 
*' never  go  into  a  factory  again."     Every  effort 
failed  to  find  her  after  the  concert  troupe  left 
Milwaukee    and    although    the    pious    Scotch 
father  felt  that  ''she  had  been  ensnared  by  the 
Devil,"  and  had  brought  his  "gray  hairs  in 
sorrow  to  the  grave,"  I  could  not  quite  dis- 
miss   the    case    with   this   simple    explanation, 
but    was     haunted    by     all     sorts     of     social 
implications. 

The  second  line  of  revolt  manifests  itself  in 
an  attempt  to  make  up  for  the  monotony  of 
the  work  by  a  constant  change  from  one  occu- 
pation to  another.  This  is  an  almost  universal 
experience  among  thousands  of  young  people 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    I^T)USTRY      115 

in  their  first  impact  with  the  industrial  world. 
The    startling    results    of   the    investigation 
undertaken    in    ^lassachusetts   by   the    Douglas 
Commission  showed  how  casual  and  demoraliz- 
ing the  first  few  years  of  factory  life  become  to 
thousands  of  unprepared  boys   and   girls;   in 
their  first  restlessness  and  maladjustment  they 
change  from  one  factory  to  another,  working 
only  for  a  few  weeks  or  months  in  each,  and 
they  exhibit  no  interest  in  any  of  them  save 
for  the  amount  of  wages  paid.    At  the  end  of 
their  second  year  of  employment  many  of  them 
are   less   capable    than   when   they   left   school 
and   are   actually  receiving  less  wages.     The 
report  of  the  commission  made  clear  that  while 
the  two  years  between  fourteen  and  sixteen 
were  most  valuable  for  educational  purposes, 
they  were   almost  useless  for  industrial  pur- 
poses,   that    no    trade    would    receive    as    an 
apprentice  a  boy  under  sixteen,  that  no  indus- 
try   requiring    skill    and    workmanship    could 
utilize  these  untrained  children  and  that  they 
not  only  demoralized  themselves,  but  in  a  sense 
industry  itself. 
An  investigation  of  one  thousand  tenement 


116       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

children  in  New  York  who  had  taken  out  their 
''working  papers"  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  re- 
ported that  during  the  first  working  year  a 
third  of  them  had  averaged  six  places  each. 
These  reports  but  confirm  the  experience  of 
those  of  us  who  live  in  an  industrial  neigh- 
borhood and  who  continually  see  these  restless 
young  workers,  in  fact  there  are  moments  when 
this  constant  changing  seems  to  be  all  that 
saves  them  from  the  fate  of  those  other  chil- 
dren who  hold  on  to  a  monotonous  task  so  long 
that  they  finally  incapacitate  themselves  for  all 
work.  It  often  seems  to  me  an  expression  of  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation,  as  in  the  case  of 
a  young  Swedish  boy  who  during  a  period  of 
two  years  abandoned  one  piece  of  factory 
work  after  another,  saying  "he  could  not  stand 
it,''  until  in  the  chagrin  following  the  loss  of 
his  ninth  place  he  announced  his  intention  of 
leaving  the  city  and  allowing  his  mother  and 
little  sisters  to  shift  for  themselves.  At  this 
critical  juncture  a  place  was  found  for  him 
as  lineman  in  a  telephone  company;  climbing 
telephone  poles  and  handling  wires  apparently 
supplied   him   with   the   elements   of   outdoor 


SPIRIT    OF   YOUTH   AND   INDUSTRY     117 

activity  and  danger  which  were  necessary  to 
hold  his  interest,  and  he  became  the  steady  sup- 
port of  his  family. 

But  while  we  know  the  discouraging  effect 
of  idleness  upon  the  boy  who  has  thrown  up 
his  job  and  refuses  to  work  again,  and  we  also 
know  the  restlessness  and  lack  of  discipline  re- 
sulting from  the  constant  change  from  one  fac- 
tory to  another,  there  is  still  a  third  manifestation 
of  maladjustment  of  which  one's  memory  and 
the  Juvenile  Court  records  unfortunately  furnish 
many  examples.  The  spirit  of  revolt  in  these 
cases  has  led  to  distinct  disaster.  Two  stories 
will  perhaps  be  sufficient  in  illustration  al- 
though they  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely 
from  my  own  experience. 

A  Russian  girl  who  went  to  work  at  an  early 
age  in  a  factory,  pasting  labels  on  mucilage 
bottles,  was  obliged  to  surrender  all  her  wages 
to  her  father  who,  in  return,  gave  her  only 
the  barest  necessities  of  life.  In  a  fit  of  revolt 
against  the  monotony  of  her  work,  and  ''that 
nasty  sticky  stuff,"  she  stole  from  her  father 
$300  which  he  had  hidden  away  under  the  floor 
of  his  kitchen,  and  with  this  money  she  ran  away 


118       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

to  a  neighboring  city  for  a  spree,  having  first 
bought  herself  the  most  gorgeous  clothing  a  local 
department  store  could  supply.  Of  course,  this 
preposterous  beginning  could  have  but  one 
ending  and  the  child  was  sent  to  the  reform 
school  to  expiate  not  only  her  own  sins  but 
the  sins  of  those  who  had  failed  to  rescue  her 
from  a  life  of  grinding  monotony  which  her 
spirit  could  not  brook. 

''I  know  the  judge  thinks  I  am  a  bad  girl,'* 
sobbed  a  poor  little  prisoner,  put  under  bonds 
for  threatening  to  kill  her  lover,  "but  I  have 
only  been  bad  for  one  week  and  before  that  I 
was  good  for  six  years.  I  worked  every  day 
in  Blank's  factory  and  took  home  all  my  wages 
to  keep  the  kids  in  school.  I  met  this  fellow  in 
a  dance  hall.  I  just  had  to  go  to  dances  some- 
times after  pushing  down  the  lever  of  my  ma- 
chine with  my  right  foot  and  using  both  my 
arms  feeding  it  for  ten  hours  a  day— nobody 
knows  how  I  felt  some  nights.  I  agreed  to  go 
away  with  this  man  for  a  week  but  when  I  was 
ready  to  go  home  he  tried  to  drive  me  out  on 
the  street  to  earn  money  for  him  and,  of  course, 
I    threatened    to    kill    him— any    decent    girl 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH   AND    INDUSTRY      119 

would,"  she  concluded,  as  unconscious  of  the 
irony  of  the  reflection  as  she  was  of  the  connec- 
tion between  her  lurid  week  and  her  monoto- 
nous years. 

Ejiowing  as  educators  do  that  thousands  of 
the  city  youth  will  enter  factory  life  at  an  age 
as  early  as  the  state  law  will  permit ;  instructed 
as  the  modern  teacher  is  as  to  youth's  re- 
quirements for  a  normal  mental  and  muscular 
development,  it  is  hard  to  understand  the 
apathy  in  regard  to  youth's  inevitable  expe- 
rience in  modern  industry.  Are  the  educators, 
like  the  rest  of  us,  so  caught  in  admiration  of 
the  astonishing  achievements  of  modern  indus- 
try that  they  forget  the  children  themselves  ? 

A  Scotch  educator  who  recently  visited 
America  considered  it  very  strange  that  with  a 
remarkable  industrial  development  all  about 
us,  affording  such  amazing  educational  oppor- 
tunities, our  schools  should  continually  cling  to 
a  past  which  did  not  fit  the  American  tempera- 
ment, was  not  adapted  to  our  needs,  and  made 
no  vigorous  pull  upon  our  faculties.  He  con- 
cluded that  our  educators,  overwhelmed  by 
the  size  and  vigor  of  American  industry,  were 


120       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

too  timid  to  seize  upon  the  industrial  situa- 
tion and  to  extract  its  enormous  educational 
value.  He  lamented  that  this  lack  of  courage 
and  initiative  failed  not  only  to  fit  the  child  for 
an  intelligent  and  conscious  participation  in 
industrial  life,  but  that  it  was  reflected  in  the 
industrial  development  itself ;  that  industry  had 
fallen  back  into  old  habits,  and  repeated  tradi- 
tional mistakes  until  American  cities  exhibited 
stupendous  extensions  of  the  medievalisms  in  the 
traditional  Ghetto,  and  of  the  hideousness  in  the 
Black  Country  of  Lancashire. 

He  contended  that  this  condition  is  the  in- 
evitable result  of  separating  education  from 
contemporary  life.  Education  becomes  unreal 
and  far  fetched,  while  industry  becomes  ruth- 
less and  materialistic.  In  spite  of  the  severity 
of  the  indictment,  one  much  more  severe  and 
well  deserved  might  have  been  brought  against 
us.  He  might  have  accused  us  not  only  of  wast- 
ing, but  of  misusing  and  of  trampling  under 
foot  the  first  tender  instincts  and  impulses 
which  are  the  source  of  all  charm  and  beauty 
and  art,  because  we  fail  to  realize  that  by 
premature  factory  work,  for  which  the  youth 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      121 

is  unprepared,  society  perpetually  extinguishes 
that  variety  and  promise,  that  bloom  of  life, 
which  is  the  unique  possession  of  the  young. 
He  might  have  told  us  that  our  cities  would 
continue  to  be  traditionally  cramped  and 
dreary  until  we  comprehend  that  youth  alone 
has  the  power  to  bring  to  reality  the  vision 
of  the  "Coming  City  of  Mankind,  full  of  life, 
full  of  the  spirit  of  creation." 

A  few  educational  experiments  are  carried 
on  in  Cincinnati,  in  Boston  and  in  Chicago, 
in  which  the  leaders  of  education  and  industry 
unite  in  a  common  aim  and  purpose.  A  few 
more  are  carried  on  by  trade  unionists,  who  in 
at  least  two  of  the  trades  are  anxious  to  give 
to  their  apprentices  and  journeymen  the  wider 
culture  afforded  by  the  ''capitalistic  trade 
schools"  which  they  suspect  of  preparing 
strike-breakers;  still  a  few  other  schools  have 
been  founded  by  public  spirited  citizens  to 
whom  the  situation  has  become  unendurable, 
ar.d  one  or  two  more  such  experiments  are 
attached  to  the  public  school  system  itself.  All 
of  these  schools  are  still  blundering  in  method 
and  unsatisfactory  in  their  results,  but  a  cer- 


122       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

tain  trade  school  for  girls,  in  New  York,  whicli 
is  preparing  young  girls  of  fourteen  for  the 
sewing  trade,  already  so  overcrowded  and  sub- 
divided that  there  remains  very  little  education 
for  the  worker,  is  conquering  this  difficult  in- 
dustrial situation  by  equipping  each  apprentice 
with  "the  informing  mind/'  If  a  child  goes 
into  a  sewing  factory  with  a  knowledge  of  the 
work  she  is  doing  in  relation  to  the  finished 
product;  if  she  is  informed  concerning  the 
material  she  is  manipulating  and  the  processes 
to  which  it  is  subjected;  if  she  understands  the 
design  she  is  elaborating  in  its  historic  relation 
to  art  and  decoration,  her  daily  life  is  lifted 
from  drudgery  to  one  of  self-conscious  activity, 
and  her  pleasure  and  intelligence  is  registered 
in  her  product. 

I  remember  a  little  colored  girl  in  this  New 
York  school  who  was  drawing  for  the  pattern 
she  was  about  to  embroider,  a  carefully  ela- 
borated acanthus  leaf.  Upon  my  inquiry  as  to 
the  design,  she  replied:  "It  is  what  the 
Egyptians  used  to  put  on  everything,  because 
they  saw  it  so  much  growing  in  the  Nile;  and 
then  the  Greeks  copied  it,  and  sometimes  you 


SPIEIT    OF   YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      123 

can  find  it  now  on  the  buildings  downtown." 
She  added,  shyly:  **0f  course,  I  like  it  awfully 
well  because  it  was  first  used  by  people  living 
in  Africa  where  the  colored  folks  come  from." 
Such  a  reasonable  interest  in  work  not  only 
reacts  upon  the  worker,  but  is,  of  course,  reg- 
istered in  the  product  itself.  Such  genuine 
pleasure  is  in  pitiful  contrast  to  the  usual  mani- 
festation of  the  play  spirit  as  it  is  found  in 
the  factories,  where,  at  the  best,  its  expression 
is  illicit  and  often  is  attended  with  great  danger. 
There  are  many  touching  stories  by  which 
this  might  be  illustrated.  One  of  them  comes 
from  a  large  steel  mill  of  a  boy  of  fifteen  whose 
business  it  was  to  throw  a  lever  when  a  small 
tank  became  filled  with  molton  metal.  Dur- 
ing the  few  moments  when  the  tank  was  filling 
it  was  his  foolish  custom  to  catch  the  reflection 
of  the  metal  upon  a  piece  of  looking-glass,  and 
to  throw  the  bit  of  light  into  the  eyes  of 
his  fellow  workmen.  Although  an  exasperated 
foreman  had  twice  dispossessed  him  of  his 
mirror,  with  a  third  fragment  he  was  one  day 
flicking  the  gloom  of  the  shop  when  the  ne- 
glected tank  overflowed,  almost  instantly  burn- 


124       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

ing  off  both  his  legs.  Boys  working  in  the 
stock  yards,  during  their  moments  of  wrestling 
and  rough  play,  often  slash  each  other  pain- 
fully with  the  short  knives  which  they  use  in 
their  work,  but  in  spite  of  this  the  play  impulse 
is  too  irrepressible  to  be  denied. 

If  educators  could  go  upon  a  voyage  of  dis- 
covery into  that  army  of  boys  and  girls  who 
enter  industry  each  year,  what  values  might 
they  not  discover;  what  treasures  might  they 
not  conserve  and  develop  if  they  would  direct 
the  play  instinct  into  the  art  impulse  and 
utilize  that  power  of  variation  which  industry 
so  sadly  needs.  No  force  will  be  sufficiently 
powerful  and  widespread  to  redeem  industry 
from  its  mechanism  and  materialism  save  the 
freed  power  in  every  single  individual. 

In  order  to  do  this,  however,  we  must  go 
back  a  little  over  the  educational  road  to  a 
training  of  the  child's  imagination,  as  well  as 
to  his  careful  equipment  with  a  technique.  A 
little  child  makes  a  very  tottering  house  of 
cardboard  and  calls  it  a  castle.  The  important 
feature  there  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  has  ex- 
pressed a  castle,  and  it  is  not  for  his  teacher  to 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      125 

draw  undue  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  cor- 
ners are  not  well  put  together,  but  rather  to 
listen  to  and  to  direct  the  story  which  centers 
about  this  effort  at  creative  expression.  x\ 
little  later,  however,  it  is  clearly  the  business 
of  the  teacher  to  call  attention  to  the  quality 
of  the  dovetailing  in  which  the  boy  at  the 
manual  training  bench  is  engaged,  for  there  is 
no  value  in  dovetailing  a  box  unless  it  is 
accurately  done.  At  one  point  the  child's 
imagination  is  to  be  emphasized,  and  at  an- 
other point  his  technique  is  important— and 
he  will  need  both  in  the  industrial  life  ahead 
of  him. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  there  is  a  third  period, 
when  the  boy  is  not  interested  in  the  making 
of  a  castle,  or  a  box,  or  anything  else,  unless 
it  appears  to  him  to  bear  a  direct  relation  to 
the  future;  unless  it  has  something  to  do  with 
earning  a  living.  At  this  later  moment  he  is 
chiefly  anxious  to  play  the  part  of  a  man 
and  to  take  his  place  in  the  world.  The  fact 
that  a  boy  at  fourteen  wants  to  go  out  and 
earn  his  living  makes  that  the  moment  when 
he  should  be  educated  with  reference  to  that 


126       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

interest,  and  the  records  of  many  high  schools 
show  that  if  he  is  not  thus  educated,  he  bluntly 
refuses  to  be  educated  at  all.  The  forces 
pulling  him  to  *'work"  are  not  only  the  over- 
mastering desire  to  earn  money  and  be  a  man, 
but,  if  the  family  purse  is  small  and  empty, 
include  also  his  family  loyalty  and  affection, 
and  over  against  them,  we  at  present  place 
nothing  but  a  vague  belief  on  the  part  of  his 
family  and  himself  that  education  is  a  desirable 
thing  and  may  eventually  help  him  ''on  in  the 
world."  It  is  of  course  difficult  to  adapt  edu- 
cation to  this  need;  it  means  that  education 
must  be  planned  so  seriously  and  definitely 
for  those  two  years  between  fourteen  and  six- 
teen that  it  will  be  actual  trade  training  so  far 
as  it  goes,  with  attention  given  to  the  condi- 
tion under  which  money  will  be  actually  paid 
for  industrial  skill;  but  at  the  same  time,  that 
the  implications,  the  connections,  the  relations 
to  the  industrial  world,  will  be  made  clear. 
A  man  who  makes,  year  after  year,  but  one 
small  wheel  in  a  modern  watch  factory,  may, 
if  his  education  has  properly  prepared  him, 
have  a  fuller  life  than  did  the  old  watchmaker 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      127 

who  made  a  watch  from  beginning  to  end.  It 
takes  thirty-nine  people  to  make  a  coat  in  a 
modern  tailoring  establishment,  yet  those  same 
thirty-nine  people  might  produce  a  coat  in  a 
spirit  of  ''team  work"  which  would  make  the 
entire  process  as  much  more  exhilarating  than 
the  work  of  the  old  solitary  tailor,  as  playing 
in  a  baseball  nine  gives  more  pleasure  to  a  boy 
than  that  afforded  by  a  solitary  game  of  hand 
ball  on  the  side  of  the  barn.  But  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  imagine  a  successful  game  of 
baseball  in  which  each  player  should  be  drilled 
only  in  his  own  part,  and  should  know  nothing 
of  the  relation  of  that  part  to  the  whole  game. 
In  order  to  make  the  watch  wheel,  or  the  coat 
collar  interesting,  they  must  be  connected  with 
the  entire  product— must  include  fellowship 
as  well  as  the  pleasures  arising  from  skilled 
workmanship  and  a  cultivated  imagination. 

When  all  the  young  people  working  in 
factories  shall  come  to  use  their  faculties 
intelligently,  and  as  a  matter  of  course  to  be 
interested  in  what  they  do,  then  our  manu- 
factured products  may  at  last  meet  the  de- 
mands of  a  cultivated  nation,  because  they  will 


128       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

be  produced  by  cultivated  workmen.  The 
machine  will  not  be  abandoned  by  any  means, 
but  will  be  subordinated  to  the  intelligence  of 
the  man  who  manipulates  it,  and  will  be  used 
as  a  tool.  It  may  come  about  in  time  that  an 
educated  public  will  become  inexpressibly 
bored  by  manufactured  objects  which  reflect 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  minds  of  the  men 
who  made  them,  that  they  may  come  to  dis- 
like an  object  made  by  twelve  unrelated  men, 
even  as  we  do  not  care  for  a  picture  which  has 
been  painted  by  a  dozen  different  men,  not 
because  w^e  have  enunciated  a  theory  in  regard 
to  it,  but  because  such  a  picture  loses  all  its 
significance  and  has  no  meaning  or  message. 
We  need  to  apply  the  same  principle  but  very 
little  further  until  we  shall  refuse  to  be  sur- 
rounded by  manufactured  objects  which  do 
not  represent  some  gleam  of  intelligence  on 
the  part  of  the  producer.  Hundreds  of  people 
have  already  taken  that  step  so  far  as  all 
decoration  and  ornament  are  concerned,  and  it 
would  require  but  one  short  step  more.  In 
the  meantime  we  are  surrounded  by  stupid 
articles  which   give  us  no   pleasure,   and   the 


SPIEIT    OF   YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      129 

young  people  producing  them  are  driven  into 
all  sorts  of  expedients  in  order  to  escape  work 
which  has  been  made  impossible  because  all 
human  interest  has  been  extracted  from  it. 
That  this  is  not  mere  theory  may  be  demon- 
strated by  the  fact  that  many  times  the  young 
people  may  be  spared  the  disastrous  effects 
of  this  third  revolt  against  the  monotony  of 
industry  if  work  can  be  found  for  them  in  a 
place  where  the  daily  round  is  less  grinding 
and  presents  more  variety.  Fortunately,  in 
every  city  there  are  places  outside  of  factories 
where  occupation  of  a  more  normal  type  of 
labor  may  be  secured,  and  often  a  restless  boy 
can  be  tided  over  this  period  if  he  is  put  into 
one  of  these  occupations.  The  experience  in 
every  boys'  club  can  furnish  illustrations  of 
this. 

A  factory  boy  who  had  been  brought  into 
the  Juvenile  Court  many  times  because  of  his 
persistent  habit  of  borrowing  the  vehicles  of 
physicians  as  they  stood  in  front  of  houses  of 
patients,  always  meaning  to  **get  back  before 
the  doctor  came  out,''  led  a  contented  and 
orderly  life  after  a  place  had  been  found  for 
9 


130       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STKEETS 

him  as  a  stable  boy  in  a  large  livery  establish- 
ment where  his  love  for  horses  could  be  legiti- 
mately gratified. 

Still  another  boy  made  the  readjustment  for 
himself  in  spite  of  the  great  physical  suffering 
involved.  He  had  lost  both  legs  at  the  age 
of  seven,  *' flipping  cars."  When  he  went  to 
work  at  fourteen  with  two  good  cork  legs, 
which  he  vainly  imagined  disguised  his  dis- 
ability, his  employer  kindly  placed  him  where 
he  might  sit  throughout  the  entire  day,  and  his 
task  was  to  keep  tally  on  the  boxes  constantly 
hoisted  from  the  warehouse  into  cars.  The 
boy  found  this  work  so  dull  that  he  insisted 
upon  working  in  the  yards,  where  the  cars 
were  being  loaded  and  switched.  He  would 
come  home  at  night  utterly  exhausted,  more 
from  the  extreme  nervous  tension  involved  in 
avoiding  accidents  than  from  the  tremendous 
exertion,  and  although  he  would  weep  bitterly 
from  sheer  fatigue,  nothing  could  induce  him 
to  go  back  to  the  duller  and  safer  job.  For- 
tunately he  belonged  to  a  less  passionate  race 
than  the  poor  little  Italian  girl  in  the  Hull- 
House  neighborhood  who  recently  battered  her 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      131 

head  against  the  wall  so  long  and  so  vigorously 
that  she  had  to  be  taken  to  a  hospital  because 
of  her  serious  injuries.  So  nearly  as  dull 
''grown-ups"  could  understand,  it  had  been  an 
hysterical  revolt  against  factory  work  by  day 
and  *'no  fun  in  the  evening." 

America  perhaps  more  than  any  other  coun- 
try in  the  world  can  demonstrate  what  applied 
science  has  accomplished  for  industry;  it  has 
not  only  made  possible  the  utilization  of  all 
sorts  of  unpromising  raw  material,  but  it  has 
tremendously    increased    the     invention     and 
elaboration  of  machinery.    The  time  must  come, 
however,  if  indeed  the  moment  has  not  already 
arrived,  when  applied  science  will  have  done 
all    that    it   can    do    for   the    development    of 
machinery.     It  may  be  that  machines  cannot 
be   speeded  up   any   further   without   putting 
unwarranted  strain  upon  the  nervous  system 
of  the  worker ;  it  may  be  that  further  elabora- 
tion will  so  sacrifice  the  workman  who  feeds 
the   machine   that    industrial    advance    will    lie 
not  in   the   direction   of   improvement   in   ma- 
chinery, but  in  the  recovery  and  education  of 
the  workman.     This  refusal  to  apply  ''the  art 


132       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

of  life"  to  industry  continually  drives  out  of 
it    many    promising    young   people.     Some    of 
them,   impelled  by  a   creative   impulse   which 
will  not  be  denied,  avoid  industry  altogether 
and  demand  that  their  ambitious  parents  give 
them   lessons   in   ''china   painting"   and   "art 
work,"  which  clutters  the   overcrowded  parlor- 
of   the   more   prosperous   workingman's   home 
with  useless  decorated  plates,  and  handpainted 
''drapes,"   whereas   the   plates  upon  the  table 
and    the    rugs    upon    the    floor    used   daily   by 
thousands  of  weary  housewives  are  totally  un- 
touched by  the  beauty  and  variety  which  this 
ill-directed  art  instinct  might  have  given  them 
had  it  been  incorporated  into  industry. 

I  could  cite  many  instances  of  high-spirited 
young  people  who  suffer  a  veritable  martyrdom 
in  order  to  satisfy  their  artistic  impulse. 

A  young  girl  of  fourteen  whose  family  had 
for  years  displayed  a  certain  artistic  aptitude, 
the  mother  having  been  a  singer  and  the  grand- 
mother, with  whom  the  young  girl  lived,  a 
clever  worker  in  artificial  flowers,  had  her  first 
experience  of  wage  earning  in  a  box  factory. 
She  endured  it  only  for  three  months,  and  then 


SPIRIT    OF   YOUTH    AND    I^T)USTRY      133 

gave  up  her  increasing  wage  in  exchange  for 
$1.50  a  week  which  she  earns  by  making 
sketches  of  dresses,  cloaks  and  hats  for  the 
advertisements  of  a  large  department  store. 

A  young  Russian  girl  of  my  acquaintance 
starves  on  the  irregular  pay  which  she  receives 
for  her  occasional  contributions  to  the  Sunday 
newspapers — meanwhile  writing  her  novel — 
rather  than  return  to  the  comparatively  pros- 
perous wages  of  a  necktie  factory  which  she 
regards  with  horror.  Another  girl  washes 
dishes  every  evening  in  a  cheap  boarding 
house  in  order  to  secure  the  leisure  in  which 
to  practise  her  singing  lessons,  rather  than 
to  give  them  up  and  return  to  her  former 
twelve-doUar-a-week  job  in  an  electrical  fac- 
tory. 

The  artistic  expression  in  all  these  cases  is 
crude,  but  the  young  people  are  still  conscious 
of  that  old  sacrifice  of  material  interest  which 
art  has  ever  demanded  of  those  who  serve 
her  and  which  doubtless  brings  its  o\vn  re- 
ward. That  the  sacrifice  is  in  vain  makes  it 
all  the  more  touching:  and  is  an  indictment  of 


134       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

the  educator  who  has  failed  to  utilize  the  art 
instinct  in  industry. 

Something  of  the  same  sort  takes  place 
among  many  lads  who  find  little  opportunity 
in  the  ordinary  factories  to  utilize  the  '' in- 
stinct for  workmanship" ;  or,  among  those  more 
prosperous  young  people  who  establish  '^  stu- 
dios" and  "art  shops,"  in  which,  with  a  vast 
expenditure  of  energy,  they  manufacture  lux- 
urious articles. 

The  educational  system  in  Germany  is  delib- 
erately planned  to  sift  out  and  to  retain  in 
the  service  of  industry,  all  such  promising 
young  people.  The  method  is  as  yet  experi- 
mental, and  open  to  many  objections,  but  it  is 
so  far  successful  that  "Made  in  Germany" 
means  made  by  a  trained  artisan  and  in  many 
cases  by  a  man  working  with  the  freed  impulse 
of  the  artist. 

The  London  County  Council  is  constantly 
urging  plans  which  may  secure  for  the  gifted 
children  in  the  Board  Schools  support  in  Tech- 
nological institutes.  Educators  are  thus  grad- 
ually developing  the  courage  and  initiative  to 
conserve  for  industry  the  young  worker  him- 


SPIRIT    OF    YOUTH    AND    INDUSTRY      135 

self  SO  that  his  mind,  his  power  of  variation, 
his  art  instinct,  his  intelligent  skill,  may  ulti- 
mately be  reflected  in  the  industrial  product. 
That  would  imply  that  industry  must  be  seized 
upon  and  conquered  by  those  educators,  who 
now  either  avoid  it  altogether  by  taking  ref- 
uge in  the  caves  of  classic  learning  or  beg 
the  question  by  teaching  the  tool  industry 
advocated  by  Ruskin  and  Morris  in  their  first 
reaction  against  the  present  industrial  sys- 
tem. It  would  mean  that  educators  must  bring 
industry  into  "the  kingdom  of  the  mind";  and 
pervade  it  with  the  human  spirit. 

The  discovery  of  the  labor  power  of  youth 
was  to  our  age  like  the  discovery  of  a  new 
natural  resource,  although  it  was  merely  in- 
cidental to  the  invention  of  modern  machinery 
and  the  consequent  subdivision  of  labor.  In 
utilizing  it  thus  ruthlessly  we  are  not  only  in 
danger  of  quenching  the  divine  fire  of  youth, 
but  we  are  imperiling  industry  itself  when  we 
venture  to  ignore  these  very  sources  of  beauty, 
of  variety  and  of  suggestion. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    THIRST    FOR 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 


CH^VPTER  VI 
THE   THIRST   FOR  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

Even  as  we  pass  by  the  joy  and  beauty  of 
youth  on  the  streets  without  dreaming  it  is 
there,  so  we  may  hurry  past  the  very  presence 
of  august  things  without  recognition.  We  may 
easily  fail  to  sense  those  spiritual  realities, 
wiiich,  in  every  age,  have  haunted  youth  and 
called  to  him  without  ceasing.  Historians  tell 
us  that  the  extraordinary  advances  in  human 
progress  have  been  made  in  those  times  when 
''the  ideals  of  freedom  and  law,  of  youth  and 
beauty,  of  knowledge  and  virtue,  of  humanity 
and  religion,  high  things,  the  conflicts  between 
which  have  caused  most  of  the  disruptions  and 
despondences  of  human  society,  seem  for  a 
generation  or  two  to  lie  in  the  same  direction." 

Are  we  perhaps  at  least  twice  in  life's  jour- 
ney dimly  conscious  of  the  needlessness  of  this 
disruption  and  of  the  futility  of  the  despond- 
ency?   Do  we  feel  it  first  when  young  ourselves 

139 


140       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

we  long  to  interrogate  the  ''transfigured  few" 
among  our  elders  whom  we  believe  to  be  carrying 
forward  affairs  of  gravest  import?  Failing 
to  accomplish  this  are  we,  for  the  second  time, 
dogged  by  a  sense  of  lost  opportunity,  of  need- 
less waste  and  perplexity,  when  we  too,  as 
adults,  see  again  the  dreams  of  youth  in  conflict 
with  the  efforts  of  our  own  contemporaries? 
We  see  idealistic  endeavor  on  the  one  hand 
lost  in  ugly  friction;  the  heat  and  burden  of 
the  day  borne  by  mature  men  and  women  on 
the  other  hand,  increased  by  their  consciousness 
of  youth's  misunderstanding  and  high  scorn. 
It  may  relieve  the  mind  to  break  forth  in  mo- 
ments of  irritation  against  *'the  folly  of  the 
coming  generation,"  but  whoso  pauses  on  his 
plodding  way  to  call  even  his  youngest  and 
rashest  brother  a  fool,  ruins  thereby  the  joy  of 
his  journey,— for  youth  is  so  vivid  an  element 
in  life  that  unless  it  is  cherished,  all  the  rest  is 
spoiled.  The  most  praiseworthy  journey  grows 
dull  and  leaden  unless  companioned  by  youth's 
iridescent  dreams.  Not  only  that,  but  the 
mature  of  each  generation  run  a  grave  risk  of 
putting  their  efforts  in  a  futile  direction,  in  a 


THE   THIRST    FOE   RIGHTEOUSNESS     141 

blind  alley  as  it  were,  unless  they  can  keep  in 
touch  with  the  youth  of  their  own  day  and  know 
at  least  the  trend  in  which  eager  dreams  are 
driving  them— those  dreams  that  fairly  buffet 
our  faces  as  we  walk  the  city  streets. 

At  times  every  one  possessed  with  a  concern 
for  social  progress  is  discouraged  by  the  form- 
less and  unsubdued  modern  city,  as  he  looks 
upon  that  complicated  life  which  drives  men 
almost  without  their  own  volition,  that  life  of 
ingenuous  enterprises,  great  ambitions,  politi- 
cal jealousies,  where  men  tend  to  become  mere 
^'slaves  of  possessions."  Doubtless  these  striv- 
ing men  are  full  of  weakness  and  sensitiveness 
even  when  they  rend  each  other,  and  are  but 
caught  in  the  coils  of  circumstance;  neverthe- 
less, a  serious  attempt  to  ennoble  and  enrich  the 
content  of  city  life  that  it  may  really  fill  the 
ample  space  their  ruthless  wills  have  provided, 
means  that  we  must  call  upon  energies  other 
than  theirs.  "When  we  count  over  the  resources 
which  are  at  work  **to  make  order  out  of 
casualty,  beauty  out  of  confusion,  justice,  kind- 
liness and  mercy  out  of  cruelty  and  inconsid- 
erate pressure,"  we  find  ourselves  appealing 


142       YOUTH   AND    THE    CITY   STEEETS 

to  the  confident  spirit  of  youth.  We  know 
that  it  is  crude  and  filled  with  conflicting 
hopes,  some  of  them  unworthy  and  most  of 
them  doomed  to  disappointment,  yet  these 
young  people  have  the  advantage  of  ''morning 
in  their  hearts";  they  have  such  power  of  di- 
rect action,  such  ability  to  stand  free  from 
fear,  to  break  through  life's  trammelings,  that 
in  spite  of  ourselves  we  become  convinced  that 

''They  to  the  disappointed  earth  shall  give 
The  lives  we  meant  to  live.'* 

That  this  solace  comes  to  us  only  in  fugitive 
moments,  and  is  easily  misleading,  may  be 
urged  as  an  excuse  for  our  blindness  and  in- 
sensitiveness  to  the  august  moral  resources 
which  the  youth  of  each  city  offers  to  those 
who  are  in  the  midst  of  the  city's  turmoil.  A 
further  excuse  is  afforded  in  the  fact  that  the 
form  of  the  dreams  for  beauty  and  righteous- 
ness  change  with  each  generation  and  that 
while  it  is  always  difficult  for  the  fathers  to 
understand  the  sons,  at  those  periods  when  the 
demand  of  the  young  is  one  of  social  recon- 
struction, the  misunderstanding  easily  grows 
into  bitterness. 


THE   TUTRST   FOR   RIGHTEOUSNESS     143 

The  old  desire  to  achieve,  to  improve  the 
world,  seizes  the  ardent  youth  to-day  with  a 
stern  command  to  bring  about  juster  social 
conditions.  Youth's  divine  impatience  with 
the  world's  inheritance  of  wrong  and  injustice 
makes  him  scornful  of  "rose  water  for  the 
plague"  prescriptions,  and  he  insists  upon 
something  strenuous  and  vital. 

One  can  find  innumerable  illustrations  of 
this  idealistic  impatience  with  existing  con- 
ditions among  the  many  Russian  subjects  found 
in  the  foreign  quarters  of  every  American 
city.  The  idealism  of  these  young  people  might 
be  utilized  to  a  modification  of  our  general 
culture  and  point  of  view,  somewhat  as  the 
influence  of  the  young  Germans  who  came  to 
America  in  the  early  fifties,  bringing  with  them 
the  hopes  and  aspirations  embodied  in  the  rev- 
olutions of  1848,  made  a  profound  impression 
upon  the  social  and  political  institutions  of 
America.  Long  before  they  emigrated,  thou- 
sands of  Russian  young  people  had  been  caught 
tip  into  the  excitements  and  hopes  of  the  Rus- 
sian revolution  in  Finland,  in  Poland,  in  the 
Russian  cities,  in  the  university  towns.     Life 


144       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

had  become  intensified  by  the  consciousness 
of  the  suffering  and  starvation  of  millions  of 
their  fellow  subjects.  They  had  been  living 
with  a  sense  of  discipline  and  of  preparation 
for  a  coming  struggle  which,  although  grave 
in  import,  was  vivid  and  adventurous.  Their 
minds  had  been  seized  by  the  first  crude  forms 
of  social  theory  and  they  had  cherished  a  vague 
belief  that  they  were  the  direct  instruments 
of  a  final  and  ideal  social  reconstruction.  When 
they  come  to  America  they  sadly  miss  this  sense 
of  importance  and  participation  in  a  great  and 
glorious  conflict  against  a  recognized  enemy. 
Life  suddenly  grows  stale  and  unprofitable;  the 
very  spirit  of  tolerance  which  characterizes 
American  cities  is  that  which  strikes  most  un- 
bearably upon  their  ardent  spirits.  They  look 
upon  the  indifference  all  about  them  with  an 
amazement  which  rapidly  changes  to  irritation. 
Some  of  them  in  a  short  time  lose  their  ardor, 
others  with  incredible  rapidity  make  the  adapta^ 
tion  between  American  conditions  and  their 
store  of  enthusiasm,  but  hundreds  of  them  re- 
main restless  and  ill  at  ease.  Their  only  con- 
solation, almost  their  only  real  companionship, 


THE    THIRST    FOR    RIGHTEOUSNESS     I45 

is  when  they  meet  in  small  groups  for  disciLssiou 
or  in  larger  groups  to  welcome  a  well  known 
revolutionist  who  brings  them  direct  news  from 
the  conflict,  or  when  they  arrange  for  a  demon- 
stration in  memory  of  **The  Red  Sunday"  or 
the  death  of  Gershuni.  Such  demonstrations, 
however,  are  held  in  honor  of  men  whose  sense 
of  justice  was  obliged  to  seek  an  expression  quite 
outside  the  regular  channels  of  established  gov- 
ernment. Knowing  that  Russia  has  forced 
thousands  of  her  subjects  into  this  position, 
one  would  imagine  that  patriotic  teachers  in 
America  would  be  most  desirous  to  turn  into 
governmental  channels  all  that  insatiable  de- 
sire for  juster  relations  in  industrial  and 
political  affairs.  A  distinct  and  well  directed 
campaign  is  necessary  if  this  gallant  enthu- 
siasm is  ever  to  be  made  part  of  that  old  and 
still  incomplete  effort  to  embody  in  law— **  the 
law  that  abides  and  falters  not,  ages  long"— the 
highest  aspirations  for  justice. 

Unfortunately,  we  do  little  or  nothing  with 
this  splendid  store  of  youthful  ardor  and  crea- 
tive enthusiasm.     Through  its  very  isolation  it 
tends  to  intensify  and  turn  in  upon  itself,  and 
10 


146       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

no  direct  effort  is  made  to  moralize  it,  to  disci- 
pline it,  to  make  it  operative  upon  the  life  of 
the  city.  And  yet  it  is,  perhaps,  what  American 
cities  need  above  all  else,  for  it  is  but  too  true 
that  Democracy — ''a  people  ruling"— the  very 
name  of  which  the  Greeks  considered  so  beau- 
tiful, no  longer  stirs  the  blood  of  the  American 
youth,  and  that  the  real  enthusiasm  for  self- 
government  must  be  found  among  the  groups 
of  young  immigrants  who  bring  over  with  every 
ship  a  new  cargo  of  democratic  aspirations. 
That  many  of  these  young  men  look  for  a  con- 
summation of  these  aspirations  to  a  social  order 
of  the  future  in  which  the  industrial  system  as 
well  as  government  shall  embody  democratic 
relations,  simply  shows  that  the  doctrine  of 
Democracy  like  any  other  of  the  living  faiths 
of  men,  is  so  essentially  mystical  that  it  con- 
tinually demands  new  formulation.  To  fail 
to  recognize  it  in  a  new  form,  to  call  it  hard 
names,  to  refuse  to  receive  it,  may  mean  to 
reject  that  which  our  fathers  cherished  and 
handed  on  as  an  inheritance  not  only  to  be  pre- 
served but  also  to  be  developed. 
We  allow  a  great  deal  of  this  precious  stuff— 


THE    THIEST    FOR   RIGHTEOUSNESS     147 

this  Welt-Schmerz  of  which  each  generation  has 
need— not  only  to   go  unutilized,  but  to  work 
havoc  among  the  young  people  themselves.     One 
of  the  saddest  illustrations  of  this,  in  my  per- 
sonal knowledge,  was  that  of  a  young  Russian 
girl  who  lived  with  a  group  of  her  compatriots 
on   the  west   side   of   Chicago.     She   recently 
committed  suicide  at  the  same  time  that  sev- 
eral  others  in  the  group  tried  it  and  failed. 
One   of   these   latter,   who   afterwards   talked 
freely  of  the  motives  which  led  her  to  this 
act,  said  that  there  were  no  great  issues  at 
stake  in  this  country;  that  America  was  wholly 
commercial   in   its   interests   and   absorbed   in 
money  making;  that  Americans  were  not  held 
together  by  any  historic  bonds  nor  great  mu- 
tual hopes,  and  were  totally  ignorant  of  the 
stirring  social  and  philosophic  movements  of 
Europe;  that  her  life  here  had  been  a  long, 
dreary,  economic  struggle,  unrelieved  by  any 
of  the  higher  interests;  that  she  was  tired  of 
getting  seventy-five  cents  for  trimming  a  hat 
that  sold  for  twelve  dollars  and  was  to  be  put 
upon  the  empty  head  of  some  one  who  had  no 
concern  for  the  welfare   of  the   woman   who 


148       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

made  it.  The  statement  doubtless  reflected 
something  of  '*The  Sorrows  of  Werther/'  but 
the  entire  tone  was  nobler  and  more  highly 
socialized. 

It  it  difficult  to  illustrate  what  might  be" 
accomplished  by  reducing  to  action  the  ardor 
of  those  youths  who  so  bitterly  arraign  our 
present  industrial  order.  While  no  part  of 
the  social  system  can  be  changed  rapidly,  we 
would  all  admit  that  the  present  industrial 
arrangements  in  America  might  be  vastly  im-» 
proved  and  that  we  are  failing  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  our  industrial  life  with  courage 
and  success  simply  because  we  do  not  realize 
that  unless  we  establish  that  humane  legisla- 
tion which  has  its  roots  in  a  consideration  for 
human  life,  our  industrialism  itself  will  suffer 
from  inbreeding,  growing  ever  more  unre- 
strained and  ruthless.  It  would  seem  obvious 
that  in  order  to  secure  relief  in  a  community 
dominated  by  industrial  ideals,  an  appeal  must 
be  made  to  the  old  spiritual  sanctions  for 
human  conduct,  that  we  must  reach  motives 
more  substantial  and  enduring  than  the  mere 
fleeting  experiences  of  one  phase  of  modern 


THE   THIRST    FOR   RIGHTEOUSNESS     149 

industry  which  vainly  imagines  that  its  growth 
would  be  curtailed  if  the  welfare  of  its  em- 
ployees were  guarded  by  the  state.  It  would 
be  an  interesting  attempt  to  turn  that  youthful 
enthusiasm  to  the  aid  of  one  of  the  most  con- 
servative of  the  present  social  efforts,  the 
almost  world'.wide  movement  to  secure  protec- 
tive legislation  for  women  and  children  in 
industry,  in  which  America  is  so  behind  the 
other  nations.  Fourteen  of  the  great  European 
powers  protect  women  from  all  night  work, 
from  excessive  labor  by  day,  because  paternal- 
istic governments  prize  the  strength  of  women 
for  the  bearing  and  rearing  of  healthy  chil- 
dren to  the  state.  And  yet  in  a  republic  it 
is  the  citizens  themselves  who  must  be  con- 
vinced of  the  need  of  this  protection  unless 
they  would  permit  industry  to  maim  the  very 
mothers  of  the  future. 

In  one  year  in  the  German  Empire  one  hun- 
dred thousand  children  were  cared  for  through 
money  paid  from  the  State  Insurance  fund  to 
their  widowed  mothers  or  to  their  invalided 
fathers.  And  yet  in  the  American  states  it 
seems  impossible  to  pass  a  most  rudimentary 


150       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

employers*  liability  act,  which  would  be  but 
the  first  step  towards  that  code  of  beneficent 
legislation  which  protects  ''the  widow  and 
fatherless"  in  Germany  and  England.  Cer- 
tainly we  shall  have  to  bestir  ourselves  if  we 
would  care  for  the  victims  of  the  industrial 
order  as  well  as  do  other  nations.  "We  shall 
be  obliged  speedily  to  realize  that  in  order  to 
secure  protective  legislation  from  a  govern- 
mental body  in  which  the  most  powerful  in- 
terests represented  are  those  of  the  producers 
and  transporters  of  manufactured  goods,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  exhort  to  a  care  for  the 
defenseless  from  the  religious  point  of  view. 
To  take  even  the  non-commercial  point  of  view 
would  be  to  assert  that  evolutionary  progress 
assumes  that  a  sound  physique  is  the  only  se- 
cure basis  of  life,  and  to  guard  the  mothers  of 
the  race  is  simple  sanity. 

And  yet  from  lack  of  preaching  we  do  not 
unite  for  action  because  we  are  not  stirred  to 
act  at  all,  and  protective  legislation  in  America 
is  shamefully  inadequate.  Because  it  is  always 
difficult  to  put  the  championship  of  the  op- 
pressed  above   the   counsels   of  prudence,   we 


THE    THIRST    FOR    RIGHTEOUSNESS      151 

say  in  despair  sometimes  that  we  are  a  people 
who  hold  such  varied  creeds  that  there  are 
not  enough  of  one  religious  faith  to  secure 
anything,  but  the  truth  is  that  it  is  easy  to 
unite  for  action  people  whose  hearts  have  once 
been  filled  by  the  fervor  of  that  willing  de- 
votion which  may  easily  be  generated  in  the 
youthful  breast.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to 
enlarge  a  moral  concept,  but  extremely  diffi- 
cult to  give  it  to  an  adult  for  the  first  time. 
And  yet  when  we  attempt  to  appeal  to  the  old 
sanctions  for  disinterested  conduct,  the  con- 
clusion is  often  forced  upon  us  that  they  have 
not  been  engrained  into  character,  that  they 
cannot  be  relied  upon  when  they  are  brought 
into  contact  with  the  arguments  of  indus- 
trialism, that  the  colors  of  the  flag  flying  over 
the  fort  of  our  spiritual  resources  wash  out 
and  disappear  when  the  storm  actually  breaks. 
It  is  because  the  ardor  of  youth  has  not  been 
attracted  to  the  long  effort  to  modify  the 
ruthlessness  of  industry  by  humane  enact- 
ments, that  we  sadly  miss  their  resourceful 
enthusiasm  and  that  at  the  same  time  groups 
of  young  people  who  hunger  and  thirst  after 


152       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STEEETS 

social  righteousness  are  breaking  their  hearts 
because  the  social  reform  is  so  long  delayed 
and  an  unsympathetic  and  hardhearted  society 
frustrates  all  their  hopes.  And  yet  these 
ardent  young  people  who  obscure  the  issue 
by  their  crying  and  striving  and  looking  in 
the  wrong  place,  might  be  of  inestimable 
value  if  so-called  political  leaders  were  in  any 
sense  social  philosophers.  To  permit  these 
young  people  to  separate  themselves  from  the 
contemporaneous  efforts  of  ameliorating  society 
and  to  turn  their  vague  hopes  solely  toward 
an  ideal  commonwealth  of  the  future,  is  to 
withdraw  from  an  experimental  self-govern- 
ment founded  in  enthusiasm,  the  very  stores 
of  enthusiasm  which  are  needed  to  sustain  it. 
The  championship  of  the  oppressed  came  to 
be  a  spiritual  passion  with  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  They  saw  the  promises  of  religion, 
not  for  individuals  but  in  the  broad  reaches  of 
national  affairs  and  in  the  establishment  of 
social  justice.  It  is  quite  possible  that  such  a 
spiritual  passion  is  again  to  be  found  among 
the  ardent  young  souls  of  our  cities.  They  see 
a  vision,  not  of  a  purified  nation  but  of  a  re- 


THE    THIRST    FOR   RIGHTEOUSNESS      153 

grenerated  and  a  reorganized  society.  Shall  we 
throw  all  this  into  the  future,  into  the  futile 
prophecy  of  those  who  talk  because  they  can- 
not achieve,  or  shall  we  commingle  their  ardor, 
their  overmastering  desire  for  social  justice,  with 
that  more  sober  effort  to  modify  existing 
conditions?  Are  we  once  more  forced  to  ap- 
peal to  the  educators?  Is  it  so  difficult  to 
utilize  this  ardor  because  educators  have  failed 
to  apprehend  the  spiritual  quality  of  their 
task? 

It  would  seem  a  golden  opportunity  for  those 
to  whom  is  committed  the  task  of  spiritual  in- 
struction, for  to  preach  and  seek  justice  in 
human  affairs  is  one  of  the  oldest  obligations 
of  religion  and  morality.  All  that  would  be 
necessary  would  be  to  attach  this  teaching  to 
the  contemporary  world  in  such  wise  that  the 
eager  youth  might  feel  a  tug  upon  his  facul- 
ties, and  a  sense  of  participation  in  the  moral 
life  about  him.  To  leave  it  unattached  to  actual 
social  movements  means  that  the  moralist  is 
speaking  in  incomprehensible  terms.  Without 
this  connection,  the  religious  teachers  may  have 
conscientiously    carried    out    their    traditional 


154       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

duties  and  yet  have  failed  utterly  to  stir  tlie 
fires  of  spiritual  enthusiasm. 

Each  generation  of  moralists  and  educators 
find  themselves  facing  an  inevitable  dilemma ; 
first,  to  keep  the  young  committed  to  their 
charge  "unspotted  from  the  world,"  and,  sec- 
ond, to  connect  the  young  with  the  ruthless  and 
materialistic  world  all  about  them  in  such 
wise  that  they  may  make  it  the  arena  for  their 
spiritual  endeavor.  It  is  fortunate  for  these 
teachers  that  sometime  during  "The  Golden 
Age"  the  most  prosaic  youth  is  seized  by  a 
new  interest  in  remote  and  universal  ends,  and 
that  if  but  given  a  clue  by  which  he  may  con- 
nect his  lofty  aims  with  his  daily  living,  he 
himself  will  drag  the  very  heavens  into  the 
most  sordid  tenement.  The  perpetual  diffi- 
culty consists  in  finding  the  clue  for  him  and 
placing  it  in  his  hands,  for,  if  the  teaching 
is  too  detached  from  life,  it  does  not  result  in 
any  psychic  impulsion  at  all.  I  remember  as 
an  illustration  of  the  saving  power  of  this 
definite  connection,  a  tale  told  me  by  a  dis- 
tinguished labor  leader  in  England.  His  af- 
fections had  been  starved,  even  as  a  child,  for 


THE    THIRST    FOR    RIGHTEOUSNESS      155 

he  knew' nothing  of  his  parents,  his  earliest 
memories  being  associated  with  a  wretched 
old  woman  who  took  the  most  casual  care  of 
him.  When  he  was  nine  years  old  he  ran 
away  to  sea  and  for  the  next  seven  years  led 
the  rough  life  of  a  dock  laborer,  until  he  be- 
came much  interested  in  a  little  crippled  boy, 
who  by  the  death  of  his  father  had  been  left 
solitary  on  a  freight  boat.  My  English  friend 
promptly  adopted  the  child  as  his  own  and  all 
the  questionings  of  life  centered  about  his 
young  protege.  He  was  constantly  driven  to 
attend  evening  meetings  where  he  heard  dis- 
cussed those  social  conditions  which  bear  so 
hard  upon  the  weak  and  sick.  The  crippled  boy 
lived  until  he  was  fifteen  and  by  that  time  the 
regeneration  of  his  foster  father  was  complete, 
the  young  docker  was  committed  for  life  to 
the  bettering  of  social  conditions.  It  is  doubt- 
ful whether  any  abstract  moral  appeal  could 
have  reached  such  a  roving  nature.  Certainly 
no  attempt  to  incite  his  ambition  would  have 
succeeded.  Only  a  pull  upon  his  deepest  sym- 
pathies and  affections,  his  desire  to  protect 
and  cherish  a  weaker  thing,  could  possibly  have 


156       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

stimulated  him  and  connected  him  with  the 
forces  making  for  moral  and  social  progress. 

This,  of  course,  has  ever  been  the  task  of 
religion,  to  make  the  sense  of  obligation  per- 
sonal, to  touch  morality  with  enthusiasm,  to 
bathe  the  world  in  affection— and  on  all  sides 
we  are  challenging  the  teachers  of  religion  to 
perform  this  task  for  the  youth  of  the  city. 

For  thousands  of  years  definite  religious  in- 
struction has  been  given  by  authorized  agents 
to  the  youth  of  all  nations,  emphasized  through 
tribal  ceremonials,  the  assumption  of  the 
Roman  toga,  the  Barmitzvah  of  the  Jews,  the 
First  Communion  of  thousands  of  children  in 
Catholic  Europe,  the  Sunday  Schools  of  even 
the  least  formal  of  the  evangelical  sects.  It 
is  as  if  men  had  always  felt  that  this  expand- 
ing period  of  human  life  must  be  seized  upon 
for  spiritual  ends,  that  the  tender  tissue  and 
newly  awakened  emotions  must  be  made  the 
repository  for  the  historic  ideals  and  dogmas 
which  are,  after  all,  the  most  precious  posses- 
sions of  the  race.  How  has  it  come  about 
that  so  many  of  the  city  youth  are  not  given 
their  share  in  our  common  inheritance  of  life's 


THE    THIRST    FOR   RIGHTEOUSNESS      157 

best  goods  ?    "^^hy  are  their  tender  feet  so  often 
ensnared    even    when    they    are    going    about 
youth's  legitimate  business?     One  would  sup- 
pose that  in  such  an  age  as  ours  moral  teachers 
would  be  put  upon  their  mettle,  that  moral 
authority  would  be  forced  to  speak  with  no 
uncertain  sound  if  only  to  be  heard  above  the 
din  of  machinery  and  the  roar  of  industrial- 
ism ;  that  it  would  have  exerted  itself  as  never 
before  to  convince  the  youth  of  the  reality  of 
the  spiritual  life.    Affrighted  as  the  moralists 
must  be  by  the  sudden  new  emphasis  placed 
upon  wealth,  despairing  of  the  older  men  and 
women  who  are  already  caught  by  its  rewards, 
one   would   say  that  they  would  have   seized 
upon   the   multitude    of   young   people   whose 
minds  are  busied  with  issues  which  lie  beyond 
the  portals  of  life,  as  the  only  resource  which 
might  save  the  city  from  the  fate  of  those  who 
perish  through  lack  of  vision. 

Yet  because  this  inheritance  has  not  been 
attached  to  conduct,  the  youth  of  Jewish  birth 
may  have  been  taught  that  prophets  and 
statesmen  for  three  thousand  years  declared 
Jehovah  to  be  a  God  of  Justice  who  hated  op- 


158       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

pression  and  desired  righteousness,  but  there 
is  no  real  appeal  to  his  spirit  of  moral  adven- 
ture unless  he  is  told  that  the  most  stirring 
attempts  to  translate  justice  into  the  modern 
social  order  have  been  inaugurated  and  carried 
forward  by  men  of  his  own  race,  and  that  until 
he  joins  in  the  contemporary  manifestations 
of  that  attempt  he  is  recreant  to  his  highest 
traditions  and  obligations. 

The  Christian  youth  may  have  been  taught 
that  man's  heartbreaking  adventure  to  find 
justice  in  the  order  of  the  universe  moved  the 
God  of  Heaven  himself  to  send  a  INIediator  in 
order  that  the  justice  man  craves  and  the  mercy 
by  which  alone  he  can  endure  his  weakness 
might  be  reconciled,  but  he  will  not  make  the 
doctrine  his  own  until  he  reduces  it  to  action 
and  tries  to  translate  the  spirit  of  his  Master 
into  social  terms. 

The  youth  who  calls  himself  an  ^'Evolution- 
ist"—it  is  rather  hard  to  find  a  name  for  this 
youth,  but  there  are  thousands  of  him  and  a 
fine  fellow  he  often  is— has  read  of  that  strug- 
gle beginning  with  the  earliest  tribal  effort 
to  establish  just  relations  between  man  and 


THE    THIEST    FOR   EIGHTEOUSXESS      159 

man,  but  he  still  needs  to  be  told  that  after  all 
justice  can  only  be  worked  out  upon  this  earth 
by  those  who  will  not  tolerate  a  wrong  to  the 
feeblest  member  of  the  community,  and  that 
it  will  become  a  social  force  only  in  proportion 
as  men  steadfastly  strive  to  establish  it. 

If  these  young  people  who  are  subjected  to 
varied  religious  instruction  are  also  stirred  to 
action,  or  rather,  if  the  instruction  is  given 
validity  because  it  is  attached  to  conduct, 
then  it  may  be  comparatively  easy  to  bring 
about  certain  social  reforms  so  sorely  needed 
in  our  industrial  cities.  AVe  are  at  times 
obliged  to  admit,  however,  that  both  the  school 
and  the  church  have  failed  to  perform  this 
office,  and  are  indicted  by  the  young  people 
themselves.  Thousands  of  young  people  in 
every  great  city  are  either  frankly  hedonistic, 
or  are  vainly  attempting  to  work  out  for  them- 
selves a  satisfactory  code  of  morals.  They  cast 
about  in  all  directions  for  the  clue  which  shall 
connect  their  loftiest  hopes  with  their  actual 
living. 

Several  years  ago  a  committee  of  lads  came 
to  see  me  in  order  to  complain  of  a  certain 


160       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STKEETS 

high  school  principal  because  ''He  never  talks 
to  us  about  life."  When  urged  to  make  a 
clearer  statement,  they  added,  ''He  never  asks 
us  what  we  are  going  to  be;  we  can't  get  a 
word  out  of  him,  excepting  lessons  and  keep- 
ing quiet  in  the  halls." 

Of  the  dozens  of  young  women  who  have 
begged  me  to  make  a  connection  for  them  be- 
tween their  dreams  of  social  usefulness  and 
their  actual  living,  I  recall  one  of  the  many 
whom  I  had  sent  back  to  her  clergyman,  return- 
ing with  this  remark :  "His  only  suggestion  was 
that  I  should  be  responsible  every  Sunday  for 
fresh  flowers  upon  the  altar.  I  did  that  when  I 
was  fifteen  and  liked  it  then,  but  when  you 
have  come  back  from  college  and  are  twenty- 
two  years  old,  it  doesn't  quite  fit  in  with  the 
vigorous  efforts  you  have  been  told  are  neces- 
sary in  order  to  make  our  social  relations  more 
Christian." 

All  of  us  forget  how  very  early  we  are  in  the 
experiment  of  founding  self-government  in 
this  trying  climate  of  America,  and  that  we 
are  making  the  experiment  in  the  most  ma- 
terialistic period  of  all  history,  having  as  our 


THE    TIIIEST    FOK    EIGHTEOUSNESS      IGl 

court  of  last  appeal  against  that  materialism 
only  the  wonderful  and  inexplicable  instinct 
for  justice  which  resides  in  the  hearts  of 
men, — which  is  never  so  irresistible  as  when 
the  heart  is  young.  We  may  cultivate  this 
most  precious  possession,  or  we  may  disregard 
it.  We  may  listen  to  the  young  voices  rising 
clear  above  the  roar  of  industrialism  and  the 
prudent  councils  of  commerce,  or  we  may  be- 
come hypnotized  by  the  sudden  new  emphasis 
placed  upon  wealth  and  power,  and  forget  the 
supremacy  of  spiritual  forces  in  men's  affairs. 
It  is  as  if  we  ignored  a  wistful,  over-confident 
creature  who  walked  through  our  city  streets 
calling  out,  '*I  am  the  spirit  of  Youth!  With 
me,  all  things  are  possible !"  We  fail  to  under- 
stand what  he  wants  or  even  to  see  his  doings, 
although  his  acts  are  pregnant  with  meaning, 
and  we  may  either  translate  them  into  a  sordid 
chronicle  of  petty  vice  or  turn  them  into  a 
solemn  school  for  civic  righteousness. 

We  may   either  smother  the   divine  fire  of 
youth  or  we  may  feed  it.    We  may  either  stand 
stupidly  staring  as  it  sinks  into  a  murky  fire 
11 


162       YOUTH    AND    THE    CITY    STREETS 

of  crime  and  flares  into  the  intermittent  blaze 
of  folly  or  we  may  tend  it  into  a  lambent 
flame  with,  power  to  make  clean  and  bright  our 
dingy  city  streets. 


By  Miss  JANE  ADDA  MS,  Hull  House,  Chicago 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SOCIAL  ETHICS 

ix+2Sl  pages,  12mo,  cloth,  leather  back,  $    ^5 

"Its  pa^es  are  remarkably— we  were  about  to  say  refreshingly— free 
from  the  customary  afademic  limitations  ...  in  fact,  are  the 
result  of  actual  experience  in  hand  to  hand  contact  with  social  prob- 
lems. ...  No  more  truthful  description,  for  example,  of  the  political 
"boss"  as  he  thrives  to-day  in  our  g-reat  cities  has  ever  been  written 
than  is  contained  in  Miss  Addams's  chapter  on  'Political  Reform.' .  .  . 
The  same  thin?  may  be  said  of  the  other  chapters  of  the  book  in  regard 
to  their  presentation  o'aocial  and  economic  facts."— iJe view?  o/  Revieics. 

"Too  much  emphasis  cannot  be  laid  upon  the  efficiency  and  inspiration 
afforded  by  these  essays.  'Charitable  Effort,'  'Filial  Affections,'  House- 
hold Adjustment,'  'Industrial  Amelioration,'  'Exlucational  Methods,' 
'Political  Reform'  are  the  topics  treated  in  a  masterly  and  revolutionary 
style.    .    .    .    The  book  is  startling,  stimulating  and  intelligent." 

—Philadelphia  Ledger. 

THE  NEWER  IDEALS  OF  PEACE 

xxiii+243  pages,  12mo,  cloth,  leather  hack,  $1.25  net 

"As  an  immediate  and  effective  solution  of  the  main  problem  indicated 
by  its  title,  this  treatise  may  well  prove  only  less  successful  than  as  a 
manual  of  instruction  in  methods  of  mutual  service  and  good  will, 

—Percy  F.  Bicknell  in  The  Dial. 

"A  clean  and  consistent  setting  forth  of  the  utility  of  labor  as  against 
the  waste  of  war,  and  an  exposition  of  the  alteration  of  standards  that 
must  ensue  when  labor  and  the  spirit  of  miiitiirism  are  relegjited  to  their 
right  places  in  the  minds  of  men.  .  .  .  Back  of  it  lies  illimitible 
sympathy,  immeasurable  pity,  a  spirit  as  free  as  that  of  St.  Francis,  a 
sense  of  social  order  and  fitness  that  Marcus  Aurelius  might  have  found 
similar  to  his  own." — Chicago  Tribune. 

The  editor  of  Collier's  writes:  "To  us  it  seems  the  most  comprehensive 
talk  yet  given  about  how  to  help  humanity  in  America  to-day." 


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AMERICAN  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 
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of  Social  Legislation. 

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giving  the  results  of  the  newer  social  thought  and  of  recent 
scientific  investigations  of  the  facts  of  American  social  life 
and  institutions.     Each  volume  about  200  pages. 

1.  THE  NEW  BASIS  OF  CIVILIZATION 

By  Professor  S.  N.  Patten.  Ph.D..  LL.D.,  University  of 
Pennsylvania. 

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2.  STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

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Yale  University. 

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3.  LEGISLATION  AND  ADMINISTRATION 
FOR  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

By  Professor  Jeremiah  "W".  Jenks.  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Cornell 
University. 

(In  preparation) 


4.   MISERY  AND  ITS  CAUSES 

By  Edward  T.  Devine,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Columbia  University. 

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On  many  of  the  subjects  touched  upon  in  3Ilss  Ad(lams*s  hooka 
interesting  material  may  he  found  in  these  volumes. 

ON  CITY  GOVERNMENT 
The  American  City 

By  DELOS  F.  WILCOX,  Ph.D. 

"In  the  'Amoriran  City'  Dr.  Wilcox  .  .  .  has  written  a  book  that 
every  thoufrlitful  citizen  should  read.  The  problems  of  the  street,  the 
tenement,  public  utilities,  civic  education,  the  three  deadly  vices,  muni- 
cipjil  revenue  and  municipal  tlebt.  witli  all  their  related  and  subsidiary 
problems,  are  clearly  and  fully  considered."— Pi7fs6ur(//i.  Gazette. 

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ON  INDUSTRIAL  LEGISLATION 

Some  Ethical  Gains  Through  Legislation 

By  MRS.  FLORENCE  KELLEY 

The  book  has  ?ro\vn  out  of  the  author's  experience  as  Chief  Inspector  of 
Factories  in  Illinois  from  1S93  to  1897,  as  Secretary  of  the  National  Consum- 
ers' League  from  l.st>9  till  now,  and  chiefly  as  a  resident  at  Hull-Mouse,  and 
later  at  the  Nurses'  Settlement,  New  York. 

"Mrs.  Kelley's  primary  aim  is  to  set  forth  the  results  achieved  by  the 
agitation  and  education  of  the  past  decade  or  so  in  certain  social  direc- 
tions—in the  recogrnition  of  the  children's  right  to  childhootl  and  to  in- 
struction and  to  opportunity,  of  the  adult's  right  to  leisure,  of  woman 's 
right  to  the  ballot,  and  of  the  purchaser's  right  to  genuine  honest  prod- 
ucts. Her  secondary  aim  is  to  show  how  much  remains  to  be  achieved, 
and  what  obsbicles  the  friends  of  anti-child-labor  legislation,  eight-hour 
laws,  pure  food  and  correct  label  laws,  woman  suflrage  and  so  on,  have 
to  surmount."— r/ie  Rccord-Hcrald,  Chicago. 

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ON  CHARITABLE  EFFORT 

How  to  Help 

By  MARY  CONYNGTON,  of  the  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor, 

Washington. 

Not  only  is  the  professional  charity  worker  often  in  need  of  advice  as  to 
the  best  methcxls  of  investigation,  administration,  etc.,  but  the  non-pro- 
fessional worker,  with  his  zeal  unrestrained  by  special  training,  is  even 
more  emphatically  in  need  of  guidance.  Miss  Conyngton's  lx)ok  whs 
written  with  tlie  requirements  of  this  latter  class  primarily  in  view,  but 


out  of  her  large  experience  she  has  been  able  to  make  suggestions  which 
every  charity  worker  will  find  of  value.     Hapiiazartl  metluxls  are  of 

s  by  sober,  patient  applii-ation  of  sucl 

ains  that  the  problems  of  relief  are  tc 

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ON  SOME  CONDITIONS  OF  CHILD  LIFE 

The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children 

By  JOHN  SPARGO.  Author  of  "Socialism." 

"  'There  have  been  many  books  written  about  the  children  of  the  poor, 
but  none  of  them  gives  us  so  impressive  a  statement  as  is  contained  here 
of  the  most  important  and  powerful  cause  of  poverty.'  This  prefatory 
judgment  of  Robert  Hunter  will  be  handed  on  by  every  one  who  reads. 
.  .  .  The  book  will  live  and  set  hundreds  of  teachers  and  social  work- 
ers and  philanthropists  to  work.  .  .  .  School  teachers  need  this 
book,  social  workers,  librarians,  pastors,  editors,  all  who  want  to  under- 
stand the  problem  of  poverty  or  education." 

—William  H.  Allex  in  The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy. 

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ON  CONDITIONS  AMONG  THE  POOR 

Poverty.     A  Definition  and  an  Estimate  of  its  Extent. 

By  ROBERT  HUNTER,  President  of  the  Social  Reform  Club:  Chairman  of 
New  York  Child  Labor  Committee;  formerly  head  worker  of  the  University 
Settlement  of  New  York. 

"I  cannot  delay  writing  you  of  my  profound  interest  in  your  new  book, 
'Poverty,'  which  I  have  to-day  read,  with  instruction,  with  satisfaction, 
and  with  a  deep  sense  of  your  mastery  of  the  subject.  .  .  .  Your 
chapter  on  'The  Immigrant'  seems  to  me  the  most  concise,  the  most  con- 
vincing and  the  most  logical  brief  statement  of  the  subject  that  I  have 
ever  seen."— Robert  De  C.  Ward,  Harvard  University. 

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A  SOCIOLOGICAL  SOURCE-BOOK 
Readings  in  Descriptive  and  Historical  Sociology 

Edited  by  FRANKLIN  H.  GIDDINGS,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Sociology 

and  the  History  of  Civilization  in  Columbia  University. 

The  book  is  a  selection  of  extracts  from  sources  ranging  from  the  Bible 
to  yesterday's  newspaper,  connected  with  a  mere  outline  of  theory. 
The  book  is  at  once  a  rounded  outline  of  social  theory,  and  a  suggestive 
guide  in  the  method  of  classifying  the  new  materials  constantly  ap- 
pearing in  reviews  and  the  daily  press. 

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